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On Wednesday, advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) called out the Syrian air force for intensifying its air strikes on Aleppo despite a UN resolution for all parties involved to stop indiscriminate attacks.
The rights group also criticized the UN Security Council for their inaction on the violence in Syria.
In a statement issued before a UN hearing, HRW said, “The Syrian government is raining high explosive barrel bombs on civilians in defiance of a unanimous United Nations Security Council resolution”. The rights group was speaking about UN resolution 2139 passed in February that banned the haphazard use of barrel bombs and other weapons in populated regions. The Syrian regime has used barrel bombs on several rebel-held towns and cities in the country.
“Month after month, the Security Council has sat idly by as the government defied its demands with new barrel bomb attacks on Syrian civilians”, Sarah Leah Whitson from HRW said.
The rights group also urged Russia and China, key backers of the Assad regime, to let the Security Council implement its resolution. It said that it has documented “over 650 major new damage sites consistent with barrel bomb impacts” in rebel-held parts of the city of Aleppo since the resolution.
“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”, the group said.
It also described the barrel bombs as “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”.
HRW also said that “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” and criticized rebel groups for “Indiscriminate attacks” including “car bombings and mortar attacks in pro-government areas”.
