The Syrian government’s Armed Forces bombed tents of families displaced from rebel strongholds in the northwestern province of Idlib on Sunday, killing nine and injuring at least 75. The information was verified by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
An AFP reporter said a large number of rockets hit a camp at dawn, with displaced people living in the Kafr Jales area in western Idlib.
The attack destroyed the tents amid bloodstains and rocket fragments. Civil Defense teams and residents of the neighborhood helped the injured and took them to the surrounding hospitals.
There, the bodies of two girls lying on the ground, covered, he observed the reporter. The NGO added that more than 30 rockets had landed in various areas to the west of Idlib city, including the camps.
“We were getting ready to go to work when we heard the gunshots. The children got scared and started screaming,” said Abu Hamid, 67, who lives in one of the camps. “We didn’t know where to run. It wasn’t one or two rockets, it was ten.”
According to OSDH, a UK-based NGO with a network of informants in Syria, the shootings came a day after five members of regime forces were killed in attacks by a group of Hayat Tahrir al-Hayat jihadists. ) in southwestern Idlib.
Dictator’s Troops Basal Assad then fired about 30 missiles at rebel-controlled areas, including the camp.
The information is supported by the opposition Syrian Civil Defense, known as the White Helmets.
About half of this province and neighboring sectors belonging to Hama, Aleppo and Latakia are controlled by HTS and other rebel groups, once the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda.
Three million people live in this region, half of which are displaced. Since its outbreak in 2011, the war in Syria has killed nearly half a million people and forced millions to flee their homes.
cluster bombs
A cluster grenade is a combat device of the category of “cluster” munitions, in which other sub-shells are stored. When the target is fired, the content is separated when released.
In its most basic form, a cluster grenade typically consists of a hollow body filled with explosive sub-shells.
“Explosives in this line are split into smaller pieces, increasing the destructive effect,” says Reinaldo Camino Bazito, a professor at the Institute of Chemistry at the University of São Paulo (USP).
The real problem lies in the way cluster munitions work: when they aim at a target, a fuse activates the weapon that spreads along the road and indiscriminately hits anything in its path on pitches as large as a football field.
Currently, the manufacture and use of cluster munitions is banned in most countries under the provisions of the 2008 Cluster Munition Convention, which today brings together 123 countries.
Countries such as Russia and the United States did not sign the agreement, and cluster bombs have already been used in Ukraine and Syria, respectively. Brazil also did not sign the agreement.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths in 11 years
The Syrian civil war, which began in March 2011, has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, displaced half the country’s population (23 million before the war), and destroyed large areas.
While Russia and Iran stand by President Assad’s troops in the conflict, Turkey supports the opposition forces. Idlib province, the last stronghold of the rebels, has a population of about 3 million, about half of whom are homeless.
The bombing is the latest violation of the ceasefire signed in March 2020 between Russia and Turkey, which ended the Syrian government’s Russian-backed offensive in the region.
source: Noticias
