Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s warplanes specifically “target
civilians,” according to a Human Rights Watch citing “compelling evidence that
the Syrian government is committing crimes against humanity.” The watchdog publicized
the report in this press release:
(Aleppo) – The Syrian
Air Force has repeatedly carried out indiscriminate, and in some cases
deliberate, air strikes against civilians. These attacks are serious violations
of international humanitarian law (the laws of war), and people who commit such
violations with criminal intent are responsible for war crimes.
The 80-page report, “Death from the
Skies: Deliberate and Indiscriminate Air Strikes on Civilians,” is
based on visits to 50 sites of government air strikes in opposition-controlled
areas in Aleppo, Idlib, and Latakia governorates, and more than 140 interviews
with witnesses and victims.
The air strikes Human
Rights Watch documented killed at least 152 civilians. According to a network
of local Syrian activists, air strikes have killed more than 4,300 civilians
across Syria since July 2012.
“In village after
village, we found a civilian population terrified by their country’s own air
force,” said Ole Solvang, a Human Rights Watch emergencies researcher who
visited the sites and interviewed many of the victims and witnesses. “These
illegal air strikes killed and injured many civilians and sowed a path of
destruction, fear, and displacement.”
Media reports, YouTube
videos, and information from opposition activists show that the Syrian
government has conducted air strikes all over Syria on a daily basis since July
2012.
Through the on-site
investigations and interviews, Human Rights Watch gathered information that
indicates government forces deliberately targeted four bakeries where
civilians were waiting in breadlines a total of eight times, and hit other
bakeries with artillery attacks.
Repeated aerial attacks
on two hospitals in the areas Human Rights Watch visited strongly suggest the
government also deliberately targeted these facilities. At the time of Human
Rights Watch’s visits to the two hospitals they had been attacked a total of
seven times.
In addition to the
attacks on the bakeries and hospitals, Human Rights Watch concluded in 44 other
cases that air strikes were unlawful under the laws of war. Syrian forces used
means and methods of warfare, such as unguided bombs dropped by high-flying
helicopters, that under the circumstances could not distinguish between
civilians and combatants, and thus were indiscriminate.
In the strikes Human
Rights Watch investigated, despite high civilian casualties, damage to
opposition headquarters and other possible military structures was minimal.
As far as Human Rights
Watch could establish, there were no casualties among opposition fighters.
For example, a jet
dropped two bombs on the town of Akhtarin in northern Aleppo at around 1 p.m.
on November 7, 2012, destroying three houses and killing seven civilians,
including five children. The strike injured another five children, all under
five. Human Rights Watch identified a possible military target in the
vicinity, a building about 50 meters away that was used by opposition fighters
at the time. This building was only lightly damaged in a subsequent attack,
however.
A neighbor who rushed to the site after the attack told a Human
Rights Watch researcher who visited the area:
It
was tragic. The buildings had turned into a heap of rubble. We started pulling
people out using just our hands and shovels. A cupboard and a wall had fallen
on the children. They were still alive when we found them, but they died before
we could take them to their uncle’s house. There is no clinic or medical center
here.
In
addition to the attacks on bakeries and hospitals, some attacks documented by
Human Rights Watch, particularly those in which there was no evidence of a
valid military target in the vicinity, may have deliberately targeted
civilians, but more information is needed to reach that conclusion, Human
Rights Watch said.
The
government’s use of unlawful means of attack has also included cluster
munitions, weapons that have been banned by most nations because of their
indiscriminate nature. Human Rights Watch has documented
government use of more than 150 cluster bombs in 119 locations since October
2012.
Human
Rights Watch also documented that the government used incendiary weapons, which
should, at a minimum, be banned in
populated areas.
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 did not take all feasible measures to avoid deploying forces and structures
such as headquarters in or near densely populated areas. However, an attacking
party is not relieved from 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.
Human
Rights Watch was able to visit only sites in opposition-controlled areas in
northern Syria because the government has denied Human Rights Watch access to
the rest of the country. While further investigation is needed, interviews with
witnesses and victims of air strikes in other parts of the country indicate
that a similar pattern of unlawful attacks have taken place there.
Human
Rights Watch believes this report should galvanize international efforts to end
deliberate, indiscriminate, and disproportionate air strikes and other attacks
on civilians, including all use of cluster munitions, ballistic missiles,
incendiary weapons, and explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated
areas.
The
information we have gathered should also assist those seeking to bring the
perpetrators of these crimes to justice.
Given
compelling evidence that the Syrian government is committing crimes against
humanity, Human Rights Watch calls on governments and companies to immediately
stop selling or supplying weapons, ammunition, and material to Syria until
Syria stops committing these crimes.
The
international community should in particular press Iraq to verify that no arms
from Russia or Iran for Syria are passing through its territory, and to that
end allow independent, third-party monitors to inspect convoys and airplanes crossing
Iraqi land or airspace and bound for Syria.
“The
Security Council, largely due to the Russian and Chinese veto, has failed to
take any meaningful steps to help protect civilians in Syria,” Solvang said.
“But that should not stop concerned governments from stepping up their own
efforts to press the Syrian government to end these violations.”
