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| A Scud killed 38 children and 40 adults in Ard al-Hamra (above) |
The Syrian government launched
at least four ballistic missiles that struck populated areas in the city of
Aleppo and a town in Aleppo governorate during the week of February 17, 2013, Human Rights Watch said today. The
attacks killed more than 141 people, including 71 children, and caused immense
physical destruction.
The extent of the
damage from a single strike, the lack of aircraft in the area at the time, and
reports of ballistic missiles being launched from a military base near Damascus
overwhelmingly suggest that government forces struck these areas with ballistic
missiles. Human Rights Watch visited
the four attack sites, all in residential neighborhoods. Human Rights Watch found no signs of any military targets in the
vicinity of any of the four sites, which would mean that the attacks were
unlawful.
“I have visited many
attack sites in Syria, but have never seen such destruction,” said Ole Solvang,
emergencies researcher at Human Rights
Watch, who visited the sites. “Just when you think things can’t get any
worse, the Syrian government finds ways to escalate its killing tactics.”
Human Rights Watch compiled a list of those
killed from cemetery burial records, interviews with relatives and neighbors,
and information from the Aleppo media center and the Violations Documentation
Center, a network of local activists.
Around midnight on
February 18 a missile struck the Jabal Badro neighborhood in Aleppo, killing at
least 47 people, including 23 children. According to local residents,
government forces started shelling the attack site about 20 minutes after the
missile struck, wounding several people. Just before 6 p.m. on February 22, a
missile struck the Tariq al-Bab neighborhood in the eastern part of Aleppo,
killing at least 13 people, including eight children. Just minutes later, a
missile struck the Ard al-Hamra neighborhood close by, killing at least 78
people, including 38 children.
The opposition
controlled the three neighborhoods, all in the eastern part of Aleppo. While
opposition fighters move throughout opposition controlled areas, there had been
no ground fighting in these neighborhoods for months, local residents said. The
opposition military headquarters known to Human
Rights Watch are in other neighborhoods.
At the time of the
attacks, many people who had initially fled the fighting in August 2012 had
returned to the area, as well as people displaced from other parts of the
Aleppo governorate. There is ongoing fighting around Aleppo’s international
airport, south of the neighborhoods that were struck, but local residents
interviewed by Human Rights Watch at
each of the sites attacked said that there had been no bases for opposition
fighters in the vicinity and that opposition fighters had staged no attacks
from these neighborhoods. During its visit, Human
Rights Watch confirmed that there was active fighting close to the airport,
but not in these neighborhoods.
The fourth missile
attack documented by Human Rights Watch
struck Tel Rifaat, a town in Aleppo countryside, around 9:30 p.m. on February
18, killing three people, including two girls. While there has been no ground
fighting in Tel Rifaat for months, Aleppo residents told Human Rights Watch that government forces at a nearby airport under
attack by the opposition have repeatedly shelled the town, causing the majority
of residents to flee. During previous visits Human Rights Watch met with opposition commanders in Tel Rifaat,
but never in the area that was struck. Local residents told Human Rights Watch that no fighters had
been there.
Human Rights Watch research indicates that at
least 141 people, including 71 children, were killed in the four attacks. Human Rights Watch was not able to
establish the first name of six of the 141 documented casualties.
The total casualty
number is probably higher, Human Rights
Watch said. Since many families left the areas after the attack and buried
family members in surrounding villages, the records are probably incomplete.
Relatives at the
attack sites told Human Rights Watch
that they continued to search for people believed to be still buried under the
rubble. During Human Rights Watch’s
visit to the attack site in Ard al-Hamra on February 24, two days after the
attack, local residents found the body of a woman who had been buried under the
rubble. A family member told Human Rights
Watch that they were still looking for other members of her family.
In each site, the
attack had completely destroyed 15 to 20 houses and significantly damaged many
more.
Human Rights Watch did not find weapons remnants
at the attack sites, and so was unable to identify the exact weapons used.
However, a group of local activists in the Damascus countryside reported on
their Facebook page that they had observed missiles being launched toward the
north before three of the four strikes.
At 9:38 p.m. on
February 18, the local coordination council in Yabroud posted
on its Facebook site that it had observed a “scud missile” in the sky over
Yabroud at 9:05 p.m., heading toward northern Syria. Witnesses in Tel Rifaat
told Human Rights Watch that a
missile hit the town around 9:30 p.m. on February 18.
Likewise, on February
22, the Yabroud coordination council reported
that it had seen three “scud missiles” flying northward around 5:30 p.m. Just
before 6 p.m., the Yabroud council reported
that missiles had hit Aleppo. Human
Rights Watch has not documented any warning of the attack that hit the
Jabal Bardo neighborhood in Aleppo shortly around midnight on February 18.
The level of
destruction and witness statements describing a single explosion at each site
is consistent with the use of ballistic missiles. Witnesses also told Human Rights Watch that they did not see
or hear any airplanes before or after the attack, which makes it unlikely that
the attacks were airstrikes.
Syria stockpiles
several types of ballistic missiles according to the authoritative
publication Military Balance 2011 by the International Institute of
Strategic Studies.
A Syrian government
official denied
that the authorities had used Scud-missiles against the opposition. Several videos
from different dates posted on YouTube, however, show Syrian military forces
launching ballistic missiles. In addition, a weapon used in an attack on
Belioun in Jabal Zawiya in December, 2012, has been identified as a Luna-M
ballistic missile (also called FROG-7), according to
identification marks on the remnants.
Syrian government
forces used ballistic missiles for the first time in December 2012, the New
York Times reported.
Since then, activists have counted more than 30 attacks with such missiles
before the attacks documented in this report. Several of them have landed in
fields without causing any damage, they said. Activists in Yabroud have claimed
on their Facebook page that the government has launched the missiles from the
nearby al-Nasiriyah air base, north of Damascus city. The Local Coordination
Committees, a network of opposition activists, have accused the 155th
Brigade based near Damascus of launching the missiles.
“Using ballistic
missiles against its own people is a new low, even for this government,”
Solvang said. “There was no sign of fighters or their bases in these areas,
only civilians, many of them children.”
