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Advocacy Group Accuses Syrian Government of War Crimes Massacre Reported as Syrian Forces Attack in South
(about 2 hours later)
PARIS — A human rights advocacy group accused the Syrian authorities of war crimes on Thursday for ordering indiscriminate and in some cases deliberate airstrikes against civilians, the latest testimony that President Bashar al-Assad is using increasingly harsh tactics against the opposition. Syrian military forces have moved aggressively to retake territory lost to the insurgency in the country’s south over the past few days, antigovernment activists reported Thursday, and in one contested town at least 60 civilians, including women and children, were killed in what the opposition called a government-ordered atrocity motivated by revenge.
The targets included hospitals and bakeries where civilians were standing in line for bread, Human Rights Watch said. The reported massacre, which could not be independently verified, took place in the town of Sanamayn, about halfway between Damascus and the southern city of Dara’a. The town sits astride a vital highway that rebel forces have been fighting to control in recent weeks.
But it also castigated the Free Syrian Army, the rebel umbrella group supported by the United States and its allies, and other armed adversaries of the Assad government, saying insurgents did not take sufficient care to avoid deploying forces and setting up headquarters in or near densely populated areas. Brigades affiliated with the Free Syrian Army had seized a number of towns south of Sanamayn, and earlier this month took control of a military base near Dara’a, where the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began more than two years ago.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad group based in Britain with a network of contacts inside Syria, said military forces had started the assault against Sanamayn on Wednesday, shelling and shooting randomly and burning or wrecking at least 20 houses. Victims included at least seven women and five children under the age of 18, the group said.
An anti-Assad activist reached independently by telephone who identified himself only by one name, Qaysar, for safety reasons, said some of the victims had been “summarily executed or stabbed or burned.” He said Sanamayn’s residents included displaced families uprooted by the civil-war mayhem that has affllicted other parts of Syria, including some Damascus suburbs. As of Thursday he said, the town remained encircled by government forces.
Syria’s main political opposition group, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, described the reported killings in Sanamayn as a massacre by a military that “slaughters civilians in retaliation for its defeats.”
The statement, issued from its Cairo headquarters, said the killings were committed “for no other reason than to satisfy the hunger for killing and the thirst for blood which control the hears of the members of the criminal Assad regime.”
There was no reporting about Sanamayn in Syria’s state-run media. Both sides have increasingly accused each other of atrocities in the conflict, which by United Nations calculations has left more than 70,000 people dead, but prominent human rights advoacy groups have contended that most of the killings are committed by government forces, which are increasingly using heavy weapons and warplanes.
One of those groups, Human Rights Watch, accused the Syrian authorities of war crimes on Thursday of ordering indiscriminate and in some cases deliberate airstrikes against civilians.
The targets included hospitals and bakeries where civilians were standing in line for bread, the group said.
But it also castigated the Free Syrian Army, and other armed adversaries of the Assad government, saying insurgents did not take sufficient care to avoid deploying forces and setting up 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,” Human Rights Watch said.“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,” Human Rights Watch said.
The group, which is based in New York, said the airstrikes, which have frequently been reported by opposition activists clamoring for supplies of antiaircraft weapons, constituted “serious violations” of international humanitarian law.The group, which is based in New York, said the airstrikes, which have frequently been reported by opposition activists clamoring for supplies of antiaircraft weapons, constituted “serious violations” of international humanitarian law.
“People who commit such violations with criminal intent are responsible for war crimes,” said the 80-page report, titled “Death From the Skies.”“People who commit such violations with criminal intent are responsible for war crimes,” said the 80-page report, titled “Death From the Skies.”
Syrian state media Web sites did not report any government response to the accusations. But the government has regularly characterized its military actions in the conflict as justified responses to terrorism.Syrian state media Web sites did not report any government response to the accusations. But the government has regularly characterized its military actions in the conflict as justified responses to terrorism.
The opposition groups said airstrikes had killed 4,300 civilians since July 2012, Human Rights Watch said.

Rick Gladstone reported from New York, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad in Beirut, Lebanon.

Human Rights Watch said its researchers visited the sites of 50 such attacks in the northern Syrian provinces of Aleppo, Idlib and Latakia, and interviewed 140 witnesses, eventually documenting 152 civilian deaths. The group acknowledged that it had been able to visit only opposition-controlled areas, since the Syrian government denied it access to government-held locations.
“In village after village, we found a civilian population terrified by their country’s own air force,” said Ole Solvang, a Human Rights Watch researcher who conducted some of the interviews. “These illegal airstrikes killed and injured many civilians and sowed a path of destruction, fear and displacement.”
A statement accompanying the report said the government had deliberately targeted four bakeries where civilians were waiting for bread eight times, and had struck other bakeries with artillery attacks.
“Repeated aerial attacks on two hospitals in the areas Human Rights Watch visited strongly suggest that the government also deliberately targeted these facilities,” the statement said. “At the time of Human Rights Watch’s visits to the two hospitals, they had been attacked a total of seven times.”
In 44 additional cases, the report said, the weapons deployed by government forces were “unlawful under the laws of war,” including “unguided bombs dropped by high-flying helicopters that under the circumstances could not distinguish between civilians and combatants.”
The document accused the authorities of using unlawful cluster munitions and incendiary devices that “should, at a minimum, be banned in populated areas.”
Human Rights Watch also said that in the attacks it documented, damage to opposition headquarters was minimal and that it could find no casualties among opposition fighters, while a town north of Aleppo was attacked Nov. 7, destroying three houses and killing seven civilians, including five children.
The report said: “A neighbor who rushed to the site after the attack told a Human Rights Watch researcher who visited the area: ‘It was tragic. The buildings had turned into a heap of rubble. We started pulling people out using just our hands and shovels. A cupboard and a wall had fallen on the children. They were still alive when we found them, but they died before we could take them to their uncle’s house. There is no clinic or medical center here.’ ”