Escalating War Crimes by Armed Opposition Groups in Syria

Indiscriminate Bombing of Civilians by Government, Using Banned Weapons

NEW YORK–(ENEWSPF)–March 14, 2013. Amnesty International released two new briefings on Syria today – one documenting escalating war crimes by armed opposition groups, including summary executions, and the other focused on the government’s indiscriminate bombings of civilian areas with banned weapons that are killing large numbers of children.

The reports by Amnesty International researchers inside Syria confirm that government forces are bombing civilian areas, flattening entire neighborhoods, often with internationally banned weapons. Detainees held by these forces are routinely subjected to torture, enforced disappearances or extra-judicial executions.

“While the vast majority of war crimes and other gross violations continue to be committed by government forces, our research also points to an escalation in abuses by armed opposition groups,” said Ann Harrison, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program. “If left unaddressed, such practices risk becoming more and more entrenched. It is imperative that all those concerned know they will be held accountable for their actions.”

Video accompanying the briefings shows the destruction from bombardments of civilian targets with cluster bombs, and scenes from Atmeh refugee camp, where Syrians have escaped to.

On March 1, an Amnesty International researcher in Aleppo found nine cluster bombs that had been dropped from a fixed-wing aircraft onto a densely-populated housing estate. More than a dozen residents were killed and scores more injured, many of them children. As always with such attacks, the site was left littered with unexploded bomblets, which will continue to kill and maim those who pick them up – often children.

Nearby, the arm of a child was recovered from beneath the rubble of a neighborhood flattened by a long-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile fired from government forces hundreds of kilometers away. Hundreds of residents, many of them children, were killed and injured in three such recent attacks which wiped out entire families.

Sabah, a 31-year-old woman who survived the carnage told Amnesty International about her loss: “My daughters, Isra’, Amani and Aya, aged 4, 6 and 11; my husband, my mother, my 14-year-old sister Nour, and my other sister’s three sons, Ahmad, Abdallah and Mohammad, aged 18 months, and 3 and 4 years. They were all killed, what is left for me in this life?”

In recent months, thousands have perished across the country in similar attacks by government forces with weapons which should never be used in civilian areas.

Elsewhere in Aleppo, the bodies of men and boys – shot in the head, hands tied behind their backs – are recovered almost daily from the river. The bodies float downstream from a part of the city under the control of government forces. Among the victims found in the first week of March were a 12-year-old boy and his father; they, like others identified so far, had disappeared in a government-controlled area of the city.

A video from another part of the country shows a boy apparently aged between 12 and 14 holding a machete standing over a man – later identified as Colonel ‘Izz al-Din Badr. He lies prostrate on the ground with his hands behind his back. A voice in the background shouts: “He doesn’t have the strength.” The boy brings the machete down on the man’s neck, cheered on by members of an armed opposition group.

“Children in Syria are being killed and maimed in increasingly large numbers in bombardments carried out by government forces,” said Harrison. “Many have seen their parents, siblings and neighbors blown to pieces in front of them. They are growing up exposed to unimaginable horrors.”

In an area in southern Damascus, witnesses described a “hole of death” – where armed opposition forces are believed to have dumped the executed bodies of pro-government fighters or those suspected of being informers. In another case, an Amnesty International researcher was told how a man accused of being a collaborator was found after being killed by an opposition group.

A neighbor told Amnesty International: “We immediately went there and found him on a heap of waste, with a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead, a firearm injury to the shoulder…His knee was broken…A brown card hung on him with the words ‘collaborator (awayni), Colonel Helal Eid’.”

Sunjeev Bery, advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said: “The U.S. government has played a prominent role in providing humanitarian support to Syrian civilians. Now, the U.S. and other governments must also send a clear message that all parties to the conflict will be held accountable for human rights violations. From the Syrian government’s crimes against humanity, to the war crimes of some opposition groups, Syrian civilians are in desperate need of basic human rights protections.”

According to the United Nations, more than two million civilians have been internally displaced. Having fled their homes, many now face renewed shelling and bombing in the areas in which they sought shelter and have been displaced a second time.

Turkey has partially closed its border leaving thousands of internally displaced people stranded on the Syrian side in appalling conditions.

“With every passing hour of indecision by the international community, the death toll rises,” said Harrison. “How many more civilians must die before the UN Security Council refers the situation to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court so that there can be accountability for these horrendous crimes?”

Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 3 million supporters, activists and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied.