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On Tuesday, New York-based Human Rights Watch called for the UN Security Council to stop the supply of weapons to the Syrian regime, which it said was launching attacks with “barrel bombs”.
The Human Rights Watch said that it had documented 85 aerial attacks by the Syrian regime against the opposition in areas they control, like the Aleppo province, since February 22nd. It urged the UN to stop the flow of weapons to the government and to any other group committing injustices against civilians in the country, where over 150,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the civil war in the past three years.
In its statement, the HRW said, “The Security Council should impose an arms embargo on Syria’s government, as well as on any groups implicated in widespread or systematic human rights abuses”. Their statement comes two months after a Security Council resolution on February 22nd, demanding an end to the attacks in civilian areas. It added that since then, “it has documented at least 85 strike sites in (opposition-held) neighborhoods of Aleppo city… including two government barrel bomb attacks on clearly marked official hospitals” and that the strikes mostly involved “unguided, high-explosive barrel bombs”, and hit civilian objects and civilians “indiscriminately”.
The group also said that the attacks could not distinguish between civilians and the fighters, and that they were “unlawful”. It added that such attacks “continue despite a United Nations Security Council Resolution unanimously passed on February 22, 2014, demanding that all parties in Syria cease the indiscriminate use of barrel bombs and other weapons in populated areas”.
Syrian government forces had on December 15th last year launched an aerial offensive on opposition areas. Hundreds of people, mostly civilians, were killed in the attacks, with thousands of families fleeing to the countryside and to neighboring Turkey to the north.
