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US Secretary of State John Kerry has hit out at the “brutality” of the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad for its sustained barrel bomb campaign. In a written statement released on Tuesday, Kerry said use of the bombs was reminding the world of the Assad regime’s “true colours.”
“It is the latest barbaric act of a regime that has committed organised, wholesale torture, used chemical weapons, and is starving whole communities by blocking delivery of food to Syrian civilians in urgent need,” the statement read.
More than 150 people have been killed in Syria’s onetime economic hub and second city over the past four days, in a string of barrel bomb raids and other air strikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
At least eight people, including five children, were the latest victims killed on Tuesday when Syrian army helicopters unleashed a new wave of the bombs which Kerry said were “filled with metal shrapnel and fuel.”
The bombs hit a mosque, which the Aleppo media centre said was being used as a school.
On Monday, 30 people were killed in barrel bomb attacks and other air strikes, among them 13 children and three women, the Observatory said. Air raids on Saturday killed 85 people.
The bombings have caused a mass exodus from rebel-held areas of Aleppo, with many of those seeking refuge finding the way to the Turkish border blocked by fierce infighting between rebel factions.
“Given this horrific legacy, the Syrian people would never accept as legitimate a government including Assad,” Kerry said, referring to peace talks due to resume in Geneva next week aimed at installing a transitional government in the war-torn country.
“While the opposition and the international community are focused on ending the war… the regime is single-mindedly focused on inflicting further destruction to strengthen its hand on the battlefield and undermining hopes for the success of the Geneva II process,” Kerry said.
Aleppo has been divided since the rebels captured large areas of the city in an offensive in the summer of 2012.
Meanwhile, the United Nations has accused both sides to the Syria conflict of grave violations against children.
Children caught in the Syrian war are being recruited as child soldiers, used as human shields, and tortured, according to a new UN report.
The report, released on Tuesday, found that in the early stages of the nearly three-year conflict, the Syrian government troops were largely responsible for grave violations against children; then, as the conflict intensified and armed opposition became more organised they committed an increasing number of child abuses.
The UN did not receive reports of formal recruitment of children by government forces, but troops and pro-government militia reportedly intimidated and seized young males, some under 18, to join them at checkpoints and during raids in pro-government and contested areas.
Th UN chief Ban Ki-moon said government forces “were responsible for the arrest, arbitrary detention and torture of children for their perceived or actual association with the opposition, and for using children as human shields.”
Witnesses have told UN investigators that the majority of children were held in the same cells as adults and that children as young as 11 were tortured.
The report found that some of the treatment children were subjected to included “beatings with metal cables, whips and wooden and metal batons; electric shocks, including to the genitals; the ripping out of fingernails and toenails; sexual violence, including rape or threats of rape; mock executions; cigarette burns; sleep deprivation; solitary confinement; and exposure to the torture of relatives.”
In one account in 2011, government forces used at least eight children as hostages against the opposition to surrender. The UN says it does not know their fate.
The UN has previously reported on child abuse, but this is the first report to the UN Security Council detailing the worsening extent of the problem covering the period March 1, 2011 to November 15, 2013.
“Of particular concern were cases of recruitment or attempted recruitment of children within refugee populations in neighbouring countries. The majority of incidents were related to recruitment by Free Syrian Army-affiliated groups (FSA) or Syrian Kurdish armed groups,” Ban said.
The lack of education or job opportunities and peer pressure were identified as key factors leading to the recruitment of refugee children, according to the report. — AP
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