HRW: Syria Opposition Attacks Civilians ‘Indiscriminately’

In a new report, the New York-based group said it had documented dozens of opposition attacks against civilians in government-held parts of Syria, AFP reported.

The group documented car bombings and indiscriminate shelling in government-held areas between January 2012 and April 2014, focusing mostly on areas investigators were able to visit.

The report said several dozen car bomb attacks in Damascus and Homs provinces had hit areas with no government military targets, and often targeted districts occupied by religious minorities.

“Besides being indiscriminate, many of these attacks seemed primarily intended to spread terror among the civilian population,” the report said.

Among the worst of the bombings was an attack in October last year outside a school in the Akrameh neighborhood of Central Homs city that killed more than 45 children.

HRW also documented regular indiscriminate shelling by opposition groups on the capital Damascus and Homs city, mostly against civilian areas, and in some cases schools full of children.

The groups responsible for the indiscriminate attacks ranged from militants like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group to militants grouped under the Free Syrian Army, the report said.

At least 10 of the bomb attacks it investigated were claimed by militants from the ISIL or Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Al-Nusra Front, but FSA groups also regularly claimed responsibility for shelling civilian areas in Damascus, HRW said.

The group urged international figures with influence to “condemn all sides for unlawful attacks”, and warned that governments providing military aid to militants violating the laws of war risked complicity in those violations.