Kremlin rejects HRW report over killing Syria civilians
The Kremlin has rejected a recent report by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) that airstrikes believed to have been conducted by Russian jets in western Syria killed dozens of civilians.
The New York-based rights group said in a statement on Saturday that two airstrikes that happened in northern Homs in western Syria on October 15 killed 59 civilians.
The Human Rights Watch said that local residents believed that the Russian warplanes carried out the airstrikes as “the sound of the planes was different from the sound made by Syrian air force planes, and the Russians fly much higher.” The international body asked Russia to investigate the report.
On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the report, saying, “In the last few days we have seen a huge number of media hoaxes and deliberate data releases concerning the consequences of the Russian military air campaign in Syria.”
"I think that this report is probably one of those," he added.
Peskov noted that the Russian military “reported on many occasions that the terrorists are taking cover in residential areas. In such cases the Russian troops chose not to hit those targets.”
Russia launched its airstrikes against Takfiri terrorists in Syria upon a request by Damascus on September 30, shortly after the upper house of the Russian parliament gave President Vladimir Putin the mandate to use the air force in the Arab country.
Since September 2014, the US along with some of its allies has been conducting airstrikes against purported Daesh extremists inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate. The airstrikes in Syria are an extension of the US-led aerial campaign against alleged Daesh positions in Iraq, which started in August 2014.
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