Syria: New Air, Missile Strikes Kill Civilians | WPN World People News

New Syrian government air and missile strikes are causing high civilian casualties in opposition-controlled areas of Aleppo in violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said on Friday. A Human Rights Watch team in northern Aleppo province has investigated recent attacks that killed scores of civilians and destroyed dozens of civilian homes without damaging any apparent opposition military targets.

A young boy helps collect what is left of his family’s belongings from the ruins of their house in Aleppo city. A Syrian government jet dropped four bombs on the street on April 7, killing at least 17 civilians.

The information collected by Human Rights Watch shows that the Syrian government continues to use banned cluster bombs and indiscriminate methods of attack in populated areas, making the airstrikes unlawful. These attacks are serious violations of international humanitarian law and the laws of war. Those who order or carry out such violations with criminal intent – that is, deliberately or recklessly – are responsible for war crimes.

“In attack after attack in Aleppo it is only civilians and civilian homes that are hit by government airstrikes,” said Anna Neistat, associate program and emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. “The Syrian Air Force knows very well that using cluster bombs and raining down missiles and bombs indiscriminately on urban areas violates the laws of war.”

During a recent seven-day mission to Aleppo, Human Rights Watch researchers documented five attacks that took place between March 18 and April 7, 2013:

● On April 7, an airstrike in the Ansari neighborhood of Aleppo killed at least 22 civilians, including 6 children.

● On April 3, a cluster bomb attack in the Sheik Sa’eed neighborhood of Aleppo killed 11 civilians, including 7 children.

● On March 29, a cluster bomb and ballistic missile attack in the town of Hreitan in northern Aleppo killed at least 8 civilians, including 2 children, and injured dozens more.

● On March 24, an airstrike in the town of Akhtarin in northern Aleppo killed 10 civilians, including at least 4 children.

● On March 18, an airstrike on Marjeh neighborhood in the city of Aleppo killed at least 33 civilians, including at least 17 children.

Human Rights Watch visited the site of each attack, interviewed witnesses, and, where possible, examined the remnants of the munitions used in the attack.

The recent attacks documented by Human Rights Watch follow the same pattern as the 59 attacks described in a recent report, “Death from the Skies: Deliberate and Indiscriminate Air Strikes on Civilians.” In its investigation of dozens of attacks in that report, Human Rights Watch concluded that Syrian forces used means and methods of warfare that under the circumstances could not distinguish between civilians and combatants, making attacks indiscriminate and therefore unlawful. Some attacks appeared to target civilians and civilian structures deliberately or did not target an apparent military objective.

In three of the recent strikes documented by Human Rights Watch, researchers found that there were Free Syrian Army bases, which are likely military targets, in the neighborhoods, but that none of the airstrikes affected them.

In Akhtarin and Hreitan, the nearest opposition military base was several kilometers away from the strike, and witnesses said that no opposition fighters were in the neighborhood at the time of the strike. In Sheik Sa’eed and Hreitan, government forces used cluster bombs– which most nations have banned because of their indiscriminate nature. Human Rights Watch has previously documented government use of more than 150 cluster bombs in 119 locations.

In all the new cases, witnesses told Human Rights Watch that the only people killed or injured by the strikes had been civilians, and that only civilian buildings had been hit. A casualty database compiled by the Violations Documentation Center (VDC), a Syrian monitoring group working in coordination with a network of Syrian opposition activists, also lists only civilians among the casualties.

The obligation to minimize harm to the civilian population applies to all parties to a conflict. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other Syrian armed opposition groups should take all feasible measures to avoid deploying forces and military structures such as bases or headquarters in or near densely populated areas. However, an attacking party is not relieved of the obligation to take into account the risk to civilians from an attack on the grounds that the defending party has located military targets within or near populated areas.

The attacks documented by Human Rights Watch represent a small fraction of the total number of air and missile strikes by government forces in the last month. According to VDC casualty lists, there were almost daily airstrikes, resulting in at least 355 civilian casualties from March 18 to April 22. The VDC does not compile separate statistics for missile strikes, but during a mission to Syria in February, Human Rights Watch documented four missile strikes that month that killed more than 140 civilians, approximately half of them children.

“Governments that claim to support human rights should make it clear that Syria’s indiscriminate airstrikes on its own people need to end,” Neistat said. “They must ensure that those responsible for these crimes are brought to justice and that means referring Syria to the International Criminal Court now.”

New Aleppo Air and Missile Strikes
Human Rights Watch documented five air and missile strikes by Syrian government forces that took place between March 18 and April 7 in the city of Aleppo and in Aleppo province. The conclusions that follow are based on investigations that include interviews with victims, witnesses, and opposition officials and combatants.

Source: Human Rights Watch