Syria: Barrage of Barrel Bombs | WPN World People News

The Syrian government is raining high explosive barrel bombs on civilians in defiance of a unanimous United Nations Security Council resolution, Human Rights Watch said. Resolution 2139 of February 22, 2014, ordered all parties to the conflict in Syria to end the indiscriminate use of barrel bombs and other weapons in populated areas.

The Security Council will meet on July 30 for its fifth round of reporting on the resolution. Since it was passed, Human Rights Watch has documented over 650 major new damage sites consistent with barrel bomb impacts on neighborhoods of the city of Aleppo held by non-state armed groups. Non-state armed groups participate in indiscriminate attacks as well, including car bombings and mortar attacks in pro-government areas.

“Month after month, the Security Council has sat idly by as the government defied its demands with new barrel bomb attacks on Syrian civilians,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director. “Russia and China need to allow the Security Council to show the same resolve and unanimity it brought to the issue of humanitarian aid to call a halt to these deadly attacks on civilians.”

The UN resolution also strongly condemns the arbitrary detention and torture of civilians in Syria, as well as kidnappings, abductions, and forced disappearances, and demands that “all parties, in particular the Syrian authorities, promptly allow rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access for UN humanitarian agencies and their implementing partners, including across conflict lines and across borders.” When Syria failed to comply with that demand, the Security Council, in a July 14 follow-up resolution, authorized UN agencies and their implementing partners to deliver humanitarian assistance across the border even without government consent.

Witness statements, satellite imagery analysis, and video and photographic evidence obtained by Human Rights Watch indicate that government forces have maintained and even increased their bombardment rate of Aleppo since the Security Council passed the resolution in February. In the 113 days prior to the February resolution, Human Rights Watch identified at least 380 distinct damage sites in areas held by non-state armed groups in Aleppo by analyzing four satellite images recorded over the city since October 31, 2013.

In the first 140 days since the resolution was passed, through July 14, 2014, Human Rights Watch identified over 650 new major impact strikes in Aleppo neighborhoods held by armed groups opposed to the government, an average of almost five a day. The heaviest concentrations were in the neighborhoods of Masaken Hanano, al-Sakhour, Bostan Pasha, Sheikh Kheder, Trab al-Hellok, Aynat-Tal, Rasafeh, and Sheikh Saed.

A substantial majority of these sites have damage that is strongly consistent with the detonation of barrel bombs. Barrel bombs, and other high explosive unguided bombs, tend to create larger zones of building destruction than is typically seen with other types of air strikes and artillery fire, often with irregularly shaped blast craters of shallow depth with scalloped edges.

These unguided high explosive bombs are cheaply made, locally produced, and typically constructed from large oil drums, gas cylinders, and water tanks, filled with high explosives and scrap metal to enhance fragmentation, and then dropped from helicopters. The damage to a small number of the identified sites was probably caused by other explosive weapons, either bombs delivered by conventional aircraft or prolonged artillery shelling. There is also strong evidence that government forces on the ground have fired hundreds of mortars and heavy artillery shells during this period, Human Rights Watch said.

A member of the local civil defense forces in Aleppo who participates in rescue operations, and who has access to a database of attacks in the area compiled by civil defense teams on the ground, told Human Rights Watch that one of the deadliest recent barrel bomb attacks in the city was in the al-Sukari neighborhood on June 16. He estimated that the attack killed about 50 civilians. The Violations Documentation Center, a local group, has identified 68 civilians killed in aerial attacks in al-Sukari on that day.

The member of the local civil defense forces said that an attack on the al-Shaar neighborhood on July 9 killed approximately 20 civilians. The Violations Documentation Center has identified 10 civilians killed in al-Shaar from aerial attacks on that day. Videos posted on YouTube show the destruction following the bombing and some of the victims of the attack.

Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that bombings had continued since the Security Council passed the February resolution. Human Rights Watch previously documented 10 air strikes using barrel bombs after February 22 that killed over 150 people. In 11 new barrel bomb strikes in Aleppo and the surrounding countryside, evidence compiled by Human Rights Watch from witnesses, published fatality figures, and videos and photographs indicates that at least 178 people were killed.

The Violations Documentation Center reported that aerial attacks killed 1,655 civilians in the Aleppo governorate between February 22 and July 22.

The deliberate targeting of civilians is a war crime, and if carried out in a widespread or systematic way as part of a policy of the government or an organized group, can amount to crimes against humanity. Military commanders should not, as a matter of policy, order the use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas due to the foreseeable harm to civilians, Human Rights Watch said.

By using barrel bombs on densely populated areas, Syrian government forces are using means and methods of warfare that do not distinguish between civilians, who are accorded protection under the laws of war, and combatants, making attacks indiscriminate and therefore unlawful.

In its February 22 resolution, the Security Council explicitly expressed “its intent to take further steps in the case of non-compliance with this resolution.”

Russia and China, who have repeatedly blocked Security Council action aimed at penalizing the Syrian government for its rights abuses, should allow the Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Syria’s government, as well as on any groups implicated in widespread or systematic human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said. Such an embargo would limit the Syrian government’s ability to conduct aerial attacks that violate international law, including by ensuring that Syria does not receive new helicopters or have its current helicopters serviced overseas. Russia and China should also allow the Security Council to impose a travel ban and an asset freeze on individuals credibly implicated in grave abuses, and refer the situation to the International Criminal Court, Human Rights Watch said.

Companies and individuals that provide arms, ammunition, or materiel to Syria, or to non-state armed groups that have been implicated in crimes against humanity or war crimes, risk complicity in these crimes, Human Rights Watch warned.

Under international law, providing weapons to forces or armed groups in Syria knowing that they are likely to be used in the commission of war crimes or crimes against humanity may amount to assisting in the commission of those crimes. Any arms supplier could bear potential criminal liability as an accessory to those crimes and could face prosecution, Human Rights Watch said.

On September 27, 2013, the Security Council acted to bring an end to the use of chemical weapons in Syria. While the unlawful use of chlorine gas has been documented since that time, the red line the Security Council drew has led to the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles, and radically diminished the risk to the civilian population from that threat.

“Barrel bombs, car bombs, and indiscriminate mortar fire are killing thousands of Syrians – many times the number of those who lost their lives in chemical weapon attacks, “ said Whitson. “What will it take to get Russia and China to allow the Security Council to enforce its own words, and take real steps to address these unlawful attacks?”

Attacks on Aleppo

The neighborhoods in northern Aleppo with the highest concentration of damage sites as reflected in the May 2014 through June satellite imagery are at some distance from front-line positions, with a high density of residential buildings. While many residents have been displaced from these areas, those who cannot afford to leave or do not want to abandon their homes have stayed behind. Some of the areas most affected in southern Aleppo, however, including the Masaken Hanano and Sheikh Saed neighborhoods, have become front-line areas, the member of the civil defense forces who is active in the area told Human Rights Watch.

The Syrian government has made recent advances in its offensive to take eastern parts of Aleppo and the surrounding countryside. In early July the government retook the city of Sheikh Najjar to the northeast of Aleppo. According to news reports the government has also taken control of the villages of al-Rahmaniya, al-Muqbilla, al-Sheikh Ziyad, Kafer Saghir, and Tel Shaeer in the northeast. In June government forces also took the villages of Ain Assan, Rasm Bakro, Rasm al-Khanat, Rasm al-Jdeideh, and Azzan, south of Aleppo, SANA, Syrian state media reported. In mid-May the government regained control of Aleppo central prison.

Human Rights Watch has also received reports of what appears to be indiscriminate shelling by non-state armed groups opposed to the government of the villages of al-Zahraa and Nubul in the Aleppo countryside. The villages, whose residents are Shia, are under siege and have been hit with an improvised rocket fitted with a gas canister – locally referred to as “hell’s cannon” – and other locally produced rockets since the passage of the resolution.

Human Rights Watch has previously documented numerous indiscriminate attacks by non-state armed groups in violation of resolution 2139. Jabhat al-Nusra, an extremist Islamist group opposed to the Syrian government, has claimed responsibility for car bombings including in Homs that killed dozens of people. Other armed groups have carried out car bomb attacks in populated areas as well. Human Rights Watch has collected evidence of many mortar strikes originating from territory held by armed groups that have killed civilians in Damascus and Homs neighborhoods under government control.

Source: Human Rights Watch