Human Rights watch have slammed air strikes by the Syrian government stating they are “serious violations of international humanitarian law”, in their latest report released earlier this week.
The 80-page report, entitled “Death from the Skies: Deliberate and Indiscriminate Air Strikes on Civilians”, found that the Syrian government had deliberately been targeting civilians in air strikes carried out during the country’s conflict.
Ole Solvang, a Human Rights Watch emergencies researcher, said,
“In village after village, we found a civilian population terrified by their country’s own air force… These illegal air strikes killed and injured many civilians and sowed a path of destruction, fear, and displacement.”
“The Security Council, largely due to the Russian and Chinese veto, has failed to take any meaningful steps to help protect civilians in Syria… But that should not stop concerned governments from stepping up their own efforts to press the Syrian government to end these violations.”
The report documented the use of cluster munitions and incendiary weapons by the Syrian government, noting they could only access sites held by the Syrian opposition as the government continued to deny access to the rest of the country.
The report also noted that whilst the Free Syrian Army and other armed groups “did not take all feasible measures to avoid deploying forces and structures such as headquarters in or near densely populated areas… 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”.
