Syrian air force kills 42 in Aleppo

A man with blood stained hand reacts at a damaged site after what activists said was heavy shelling by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in Masaken Hanano neighborhood in Aleppo. (Reuters)

Staff writer, Al Arabiya News
Sunday, 22 December 2013 

 

The Syrian air force on Sundya bombed a neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo killing at least 42 people, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

“The toll has risen to 42 people killed in Hanano,” the group said, referring to the neighborhood hit by massively destructive TNT-packed barrel bombs.

Hundreds of people have been killed during the past week in Aleppo as Syrian aircraft have dropped crude barrel bombs on the country’s onetime commercial hub, now largely reduced to rubble, according to activists, medics and other witnesses, AFP reported.

The Aleppo Media Center, a network of citizen journalists in the northern city, had singled out the bombing of Hanano as especially deadly “leaving no survivors” in a convoy of cars.

“They hit a convoy of cars on a road in Hanano, many cars were destroyed. There were civilians there,” said the Observatory’s Rami Abdelrahman, according to Reuters.

Human Rights Watch said in a report over the weekend that barrel bomb attacks had killed scores of civilians in Aleppo in the last month. It described the attacks as illegal and said they had hit residential and shopping areas.

“The Syrian air force is either criminally incompetent, doesn’t care whether it kills scores of civilians, or deliberately targets civilian areas,” HRW senior emergency researcher Ole Solvang said in the report, Reuters reported.

Barrel bombs are explosive-filled cylinders or oil drums that are often rolled out of the back of helicopters with little attempt at striking a particular target. They are capable of causing widespread casualties and significant damage.

President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, battling rebels in a 2 1/2-year conflict that has killed more than 100,000 people, frequently deploy air power and artillery against rebel-held districts across the country.

They have been unable to recapture eastern and central parts of Aleppo, which rebels seized in the summer of 2012, but they have driven rebel fighters back from towns to the southeast of the city in recent weeks.

(With AFP and Reuters)

Last Update: Sunday, 22 December 2013 KSA 20:44 - GMT 17:44