Syria terrorist groups kill civilians: HRW

Foreign-backed terrorist groups fighting against the Syrian government have resorted to car bombs and rocket attacks to kill Syrian civilians, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) says.

On Monday, the rights body issued a report shedding light on the violations the terrorist groups committed in Syria between January, 2012 and April, 2014. The report focuses on indiscriminate car bombs, mortar attacks and unguided rocket attacks by the terrorist groups in heavily populated, government-controlled areas .

The reports, which are based on accounts by victims and witnesses, on-site investigations, publicly available videos and other research, highlights that the attacks have killed hundreds of civilians in the capital, Damascus, and in Homs in central Syria.

The terrorist groups started “using car bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), sometimes in suicide attacks, in areas under government control in 2012. Initial attacks targeted state security forces and outposts, but the groups soon began to carry out bombings in populated areas without evident military targets,” the report says.

It highlights that the terrorist groups carried out “17 car bombings and other IED attacks between January 2012 and April 2014 in Jaramana in Damascus Countryside."

It further highlights that the attacks were conducted in “commercial and residential areas, squares in the center of towns."

The report by the HRW, quoting witnesses, says that in all of the terrorist attacks “there were no military targets anywhere near the site of the bombing.”

“These attacks were intended primarily to spread terror among the civilian population, in violation of international law,” the report says.

The rights body underscores in the report that the terrorist groups “frequently fired mortars, locally made rockets, and other artillery into Damascus and its environs and Homs, in apparently indiscriminate attacks that caused numerous civilian casualties.”

Condemning the terrorist attacks by the Takfiri groups in Syria, the HRW urges the terrorist groups operating against the Syrian government to immediately end “all deliberate, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks against civilians and cease all use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in populated areas.”

The HRW also calls on certain regional and western countries supporting the terrorist groups in Syria to “publicly condemn abuses committed by opposition groups and urge them to cease deliberate, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks against civilians.”

Syria has entered the fifth year of a foreign-sponsored war, which has taken the lives of more than 215,000 people.

IA/NN/HRB

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