 |
| Assad child victims (Photos by AFP) |
Civilians, many of them
children, are the main victims of a campaign of relentless and indiscriminate
attacks by the Syrian army, Amnesty
International said in a new briefing.
The briefing paper
(and accompanying video footage) is based on first-hand field investigations
carried out in the first half of September by Amnesty International into
attacks which killed 166 civilians, including 48 children and 20 women, and
injured hundreds in 26 towns and villages in the Idlib, Jabal al-Zawiya and
north Hama regions.
The briefing paper
provides fresh evidence of a pattern that has emerged in recent weeks in areas
where government forces, pushed into retreat by opposition forces, are now
indiscriminately bombing and shelling lost territory – with disastrous
consequences for the civilian population.
“Government forces now
routinely bomb and shell towns and villages using battlefield weapons which
cannot be aimed at specific targets, knowing that the victims of such
indiscriminate attacks are almost always civilians. Such weapons should
never be used in residential areas,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty
International Senior Crisis Response Adviser, who recently returned from
northern Syria.
“The plight of the
civilian population in this region of Syria has been under-reported as world
attention has largely focused on the fighting in Aleppo and Damascus. But the
horrors of what the residents of Idlib, Jabal al-Zawiya and north Hama endure
every day is just as harrowing. Such indiscriminate attacks constitute war
crimes.”
Civilians are being
killed or injured in their homes, while running for cover, or in the very
places where they had sought refuge from the bombardments.
On 16 September, eight
civilians - five of them children - were killed and many more injured in a
series of air strikes in Kfar Awayed in Jabal al-Zawiya. Residents told Amnesty
International that seven of the victims were killed at a wedding party and in
nearby houses, and a six-year-old boy was killed while buying bread.
The same pattern is
repeated throughout the areas that have come under the effective control of
opposition forces.
Amnesty International
witnessed daily air bombardment, artillery and mortar strikes in towns and
villages throughout the region. The deployment of such imprecise
battlefield weapons and munitions against residential areas in recent weeks has
resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of civilian casualties.
Among the victims of
such attacks were 35 civilians killed in the village of Kfar Anbel in two
separate air bombardments. On 28 August, four air strikes in the market
square killed 22 civilians.
On 22 August, a bombardment near a grocery story
killed 13 civilians, including 31-year-old Zahia al-Aabbi who collected plastic
around the village and then sold it to support her mother, sisters, disabled
brother and blind father.
Attacks near hospitals
shortly after a large influx of casualties, or by bread queues raise suspicions
that such attacks deliberately target large gatherings of civilians, a serious
violation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and a war crime.
The high death toll of
children documented by Amnesty International further underlines the
indiscriminate nature of many attacks by the Syrian Army. In one, four children
-- Ghofran Habboub, her brother and two cousins -- were killed when their home
was bombed on 14 August in the village of Shellakh (near Idlib).
A few days later, on 18
August, a large caliber mortar landed in a street in Ma’arat al-No’man, south
of Idlib, killing two five-year-old girls, Hajar Rajwan and Ines Sabbouh and
two cousins aged 10 and 11, as they played outside their homes.
Some have been killed
as they fled for cover or where they sought refuge. Hundreds have lost
their lives or were injured, many of them children, in recent weeks alone,
since the Syrian government forces unleashed a campaign of relentless and
indiscriminate air and artillery attacks.
Yet the international
community remains paralyzed and riven by disagreements, which have so far
prevented any effective pressure being brought to bear on those responsible for
such attacks.
Such indiscriminate
attacks constitute war crimes and those responsible up and down the chain of
command should know that they will be held accountable and that they will not
be able to hide behind the excuse that they were obeying orders.
The UN Security Council
should speed up this process by referring the situation in Syria to the
Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in order to ensure that
that the perpetrators of these war crimes and other crimes under international
law are brought to justice.
“Members of the UN
Security Council should set aside their political wrangling and put the victims
first,” said Rovera.
“A referral to the ICC
would send a powerful message to those responsible for crimes under
international law that the time for impunity is over and would make all parties
involved in the conflict – government forces as well as opposition forces –
think twice before committing such violations.”
Opposition fighters
have at times also used imprecise weapons (such as mortars) or even inherently
indiscriminate weapons (such as home-made rockets) in populated residential
areas, further endangering the civilian population.
As the conflict grinds
on there is a danger that opposition fighters, if they succeed in their efforts
to procure longer-range weapons, will also step up indiscriminate attacks and
other abuses, which the international community has been unable and unwilling
to stop when committed on such a large scale by government forces.
All
Syrian armed opposition groups – those belonging to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and
others – must make it clear to all those under their command that the fact that
government forces violate IHL does not excuse similar grave violations on their
part and that such violations will not be tolerated.
