Syria: Fighter Jet Bombing Kills Over 40 Civilians

More than 100 Wounded in Attack on Azaz, Near Turkish Border

A residential area in Azaz, hit by at least two bombs from a Syrian fighter jet on August 15, 2012.
© 2012 Rachel Beth Anderson for Human Rights Watch

A local resident holding up a piece of one of the bombs that hit a residential area in the town of Azaz on August 15, 2012, killing at least 40 civilians.
© 2012 Rachel Beth Anderson for Human Rights Watch

Residents of Azaz searching for missing people in the rubble of houses struck by bombs from a Syrian fighter jet on August 15, 2012.
© 2012 Rachel Beth Anderson for Human Rights Watch

© 2012 Human Rights Watch

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(Azaz) – A Syrian government fighter jet bombed a residential neighborhood, killing more than 40 civilians and wounding at least 100 others in the town of Azaz, including many women and children, Human Rights Watch said today after visiting the town.  In the attack on August 15, 2012, at least two bombs destroyed an entire block of houses in the al-Hara al-Kablie neighborhood of Azaz, in Syria’s northern Aleppo province.

Human Rights Watch investigated the site of the bombing two hours after the attack and interviewed witnesses, victims, medical personnel, and relatives of those killed.

“This horrific attack killed and wounded scores of civilians and destroyed a whole residential block,” said Anna Neistat, acting emergencies director at Human Rights Watch.  “Yet again, Syrian government forces attacked with callous disregard for civilian life.”

Azaz residents told Human Rights Watch that, at around 3 p.m., they saw a fighter jet drop at least two bombs on the residential area. Within seconds, dozens of houses in an area of approximately 70-by-70 meters – more than half a football field – were flattened.  Houses on the surrounding streets were significantly damaged, with collapsed walls and ceilings. On the streets around the bombed area, windows were broken and some walls had collapsed.

Two opposition Free Syrian Army facilities in the vicinity of the attack might have been targets of the Syrian aircraft, Human Rights Watch said. One was the headquarters of the local Free Syrian Army brigade, in the former building of the Baath party, two streets away from the block that was hit. The other was a detention facility where the Free Syrian Army held “security detainees” – government military personnel and members of pro-government shabeeha militia. Neither of these facilities was damaged in the attack.

Rescuers used two bulldozers to retrieve the dead and wounded from the ruins. By 7 p.m., medical personnel at the scene said they had recovered 25 bodies, and were looking for more in the rubble. A man helping to bury the bodies said that by midnight 33 people had been buried in Azaz.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eILnXAP5H8&feature=player_embedded

Syria: Bombing Kills More Than 40 Civilians

A Syrian government fighter jet bombed a residential neighborhood, killing more than 40 civilians and wounding at least 100 others in the town of Azaz, including many women and children, Human Rights Watch said today after visiting the town. http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/08/16/syria-fighter-jet-bombing-kills-over-40-ci...

The exact number of victims is difficult to verify. Most of the wounded were transported to hospitals across the nearby Turkish border.  A hospital volunteer in the Turkish town of Kilis, about 20 kilometers north of Azaz, told Human Rights Watch that 61 wounded people from Azaz had been brought to the hospital, and another 13 people had died either on the way to Kilis or shortly after arrival, among them seven men, two women and four children. At least another 16 severely wounded people were brought to a hospital in the Turkish town of Gaziantep, about 80 kilometers from Azaz, a doctor in that hospital told Human Rights Watch.

One Azaz resident, “Ahmed,” told Human Rights Watch that the bombing had killed at least 12 members of his family in their home. He believed that four other family members were still under the ruins. He said:

I was about 100 meters away from the house when I saw the airplane and heard the sound of the bombing and destruction. My three brothers lived here. I buried 12 of my family members today, including my father, my mother, and my sister – my brother’s wife as well. Walid, my brother, was cut into pieces. We didn’t recognize him at first. We buried my brothers’ children also. The youngest was 40 days old.

“Ali” was weeping on the ruins of his house. He told Human Rights Watch:

I was on the roof, making tomato soup, when I suddenly heard the plane. I heard several loud bangs, and was thrown to the floor. When I got up, I saw my wife who was injured – hit in the chest by shrapnel or debris. She was taken to the hospital – I still do not know what happened to her.

“Ayman” told Human Rights Watch:

My brother, sister and my father’s wife were killed today. What was Bashar al-Assad looking for in this area? …There were no weapons here. I live far away from my family, but when I heard the sounds of the explosion I came here and saw all this destruction. I was here when they removed the bodies of my family from under the rubble. Two of my killed relatives were 9 and 6 years old.

International humanitarian law, or the laws of war, applies to all Syrian government and armed opposition forces in Syria. The laws of war prohibit direct attacks on civilians. Homes, apartments, and other civilian structures are also to be protected from attack, unless they are being used for military purposes. Where there is doubt about whether a target is military or civilian, it must be presumed to be civilian.

The laws of war also prohibit attacks that strike military targets and civilians indiscriminately, such as those that are not directedat a specific military target.Attacks are also prohibited that may be expected to cause incidental civilian loss that would be disproportionate to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the attack.

Military commanders must choose the means of attack that can be directed at military targets and will minimize incidental harm to civilians. If the weapons used are so inaccurate that they cannot be directed at military targets without imposing a substantial risk of civilian harm, then they should not be deployed.  Weapons, such as aerial bombs with a large blast radius may be considered indiscriminate when used in populated areas.

The laws of war do not prohibit fighting in urban areas, although the presence of many civilians places greater obligations on all warring parties to take steps to minimize harm to civilians. All forces need to take constant care during military operations to spare the civilian population, and take all feasible precautions to avoid loss of civilian life and property. These precautions include doing everything feasible to verify that the objects of attack are military targets and not civilians or civilian objects, and giving "effective advance warning" of attacks when circumstances permit.

All forces must also avoid deploying near densely populated areas, and strive to remove civilians from the vicinity of their forces. At the same time, attacking forces are not relieved from their obligation to take into account the risk to civilians simply because they consider the defending forces responsible for locating military targets within populated areas.

Governments have an obligation to investigate allegations of serious laws-of-war violations by their military forces. Those committed with criminal intent – deliberately or recklessly – are war crimes. Governments are obligated to identify and prosecute the individuals responsible for war crimes according to international fair-trial standards.

Human Rights Watch called on United Nations Security Council members to impose an arms embargo on the Syrian government and targeted sanctions on government officials responsible for abuses, and refer the Syrian conflict to the International Criminal Court.

“Syrian forces in northern Aleppo are using heavy artillery and aerial bombing in populated areas that kill and maim civilians every day,” Neistat said. “All Security Council members should show that protection of civilians means more than empty words.”

Bron : Human Rights Watch

Syria: Fighter Planes Strike Aleppo Hospital

Government Rocket Attacks Over Two Days Kill Four Civilians, Wound Five

Dar al Shifaa Hospital in Aleppo, clearly marked with red crescents, was attacked by Syrian government aircraft on August 12 and 14, 2012, killing four civilians and wounding five.
© 2012 Rachel Beth Anderson for Human Rights Watch

The upper floors of Dar al Shifaa Hospital in Aleppo were badly damaged in government rocket attacks on August 12 and 14, 2012.
© 2012 Rachel Beth Anderson for Human Rights Watch

ail remnants from S-5 rockets that hit Dar al Shifaa Hospital in Aleppo on August 12 and 14, 2012.
© 2012 Rachel Beth Anderson for Human Rights Watch



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Fighter jet attacks on a hospital twice in three days indicate that this was no accident. By firing rockets at a clearly marked hospital, the government shows blatant disregard for civilian lives.
Ole Solvang, emergencies researcher



Fighter jet attacks on a hospital twice in three days indicate that this was no accident. By firing rockets at a clearly marked hospital, the government shows blatant disregard for civilian lives.
Ole Solvang, emergencies researcher
(Aleppo) – Syrian government fighter planes fired rockets that struck the main emergency hospital in an opposition-controlled area of Aleppo on August 14, 2012, wounding two civilians and causing significant damage, Human Rights Watch said today after visiting the damaged hospital.

A rocket attack by government aircraft on the hospital two days earlier, on August 12, apparently killed four civilians and wounded three, Human Rights Watch said.

“Fighter jet attacks on a hospital twice in three days indicate that this was no accident,” said Ole Solvang, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “By firing rockets at a clearly marked hospital, the government shows blatant disregard for civilian lives.”

Human Rights Watch visited the Dar al Shifaa Hospital, in the Sha’ar neighborhood of Aleppo, about one hour after the August 14 attack, and examined the physical damage and rocket remnants. Hospital staff told Human Rights Watch that no opposition fighters were deployed at the hospital at the time of the two attacks, and only several armed hospital guards were providing security. Human Rights Watch saw no signs of opposition military activity in or around the hospital building.

The hospital is an established medical facility and clearly marked with a red crescent emblem on the front.

Hospital medical staff told Human Rights Watch that government aircraft attacked the hospital and a nearby school at about 3 p.m. on August 14. Three or four rockets hit the upper floors of the seven-story hospital, they said. On August 12, government aircraft hit the hospital with six rockets in a similar attack, hospital staff said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1Gr_9KHjLw&feature=player_embedded

HRW's Anna Neistat in Aleppo

Syria: Fighter Planes Strike Aleppo Hospital - Government Rocket Attacks Over Two Days Kill Four Civilians, Wound Five

On the fourth floor of the hospital, Human Rights Watch saw the tail remnants from about a dozen S-5 rockets. These rockets are fired from aircraft with a range of three to four kilometers.

The attacks on August 12 and 14 caused major damage to the four upper floors of the hospital, destroying walls, floors, windows, and equipment in operating rooms and other wards. According to the chief physician, Dr. Mohammed Asi, the attack on August 12 killed four civilians outside the hospital and wounded three nurses. The August 14 attack wounded at least two civilians who were on the street outside the hospital, he said.

One of the wounded in the August 14 attack was a doctor from a makeshift field hospital in western Aleppo, who said he had stopped by Al Shifaa Hospital to get medical supplies for his clinic. The doctor sustained shrapnel wounds on his upper legs, left foot, and both arms. He told Human Rights Watch that another person was wounded when one of the rockets hit the street near the hospital.

Doctors at Al Shifaa Hospital told Human Rights Watch that because the area had been subjected to earlier attacks, they had limited the use of the upper floors to emergency surgery.  As a result of the two rocket attacks, hospital staff are now only using the bottom two floors.

“We had just finished surgery and moved to the second floor when the rockets hit,” one doctor told Human Rights Watch. “If they had hit just minutes before we would have all been dead.”

The doctors said that Dar al Shifaa Hospital is the main emergency hospital in the eastern part of the city of Aleppo, an area currently controlled by the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA). According to hospital records, as of 4 p.m. on August 14, when Human Rights Watch visited the hospital, the hospital had that day received 24 civilian casualties, including four children and four dead bodies from other attacks around the city, mainly from shelling in the Tariq al-Bab area. The hospital keeps separate records for wounded and killed FSA soldiers.

The doctors said that government forces had used Al Shifaa Hospital until opposition forces took control of the area in late July.

All hospitals, whether civilian or military, are specially protected under international humanitarian law, known as the laws of war. They may not be targeted, even if being used to treat enemy fighters. Under the Geneva Conventions, hospitals remain protected unless they are “used to commit hostile acts” that are outside their humanitarian function. Even then, they are only subject to attack after a warning has been given setting a reasonable time limit, and after such warning has gone unheeded.

Under the laws of war, parties to a conflict must take all feasible precautions to ensure that a target of attack is a military objective and not a civilian object. Attacks that do not discriminate between military targets and civilian objects are prohibited. Individuals who order or carry out unlawful attacks willfully – that is, deliberately or recklessly – are responsible for war crimes. States are obligated under the laws of war to investigate alleged war crimes and prosecute those responsible.

In addition to the two recent attacks on Al Shifaa hospital, government forces have allegedly targeted an ambulance in Aleppo. The head of Dar al Shifaa Hospital, Dr. Asi, told Human Rights Watch that a helicopter attacked an ambulance with rockets about 15 days ago, killing the driver, a nurse, and a wounded man in the ambulance. Human Rights Watch was unable to verify his account.

“Hospitals, doctors, and ambulances should never be attacked,” Solvang said. “In Aleppo, the Syrian government has flouted this principle of international law.”

Human Rights Watch