Head of the Syrian Coalition’s foreign mission to Germany Bassam Abdullah said that the international community has a political, legal and moral responsibility to force the Assad regime and Russia to stop the horrific massacres they are committing in Syria. He expressed hope that the European Union will take concrete steps in line with the firm, outright positions German officials have repeatedly made with regards to the situation in Syria.
Abdullah condemned the heinous crimes committed by the Assad regime and Russia against civilians in Syria as he welcomed the remarks made recently by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Syria. “Germany’s position has been consistent and clear with regard to the massacres being committed against our people in Syria in general and in Aleppo in particular,” Abdullah said.
Bashar Al-Assad is guilty of committing war crimes against civilian populations in Syria and is not seen as an “ally” of Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a joint-press conference with Barack Obama in Berlin on Thursday.
“Assad has actively tried to kill his own people. He has bombed them with barrel bombs in a most terrible way. He has brought untold suffering over his people — if you look at Aleppo and other places,” Merkel added.
“When you talk to the many Syrian refugees who have fled here to Germany, they will tell you their own personal story, and the majority of them — the great majority of them — fled from Assad, and most of them did not even flee IS. So I don’t see him as an ally.”
Steinmeier condemned the “recent violent excesses in the strongest possible terms” in reference to the ongoing wave of brutal airstrikes on Aleppo where five hospitals have been destroyed by Assad regime and Russian airstrikes in the last 72 hours.
“With each additional innocent victim, each school that is hit and each hospital that is destroyed, the logic of violence is merely intensified, and without an end to the madness or even a solution coming the slightest bit closer,” Germany’s top diplomat said in a statement released on Thursday.
Activists said that at least 321 people, including 55 children and women, have been killed in the escalating aerial campaign by the Assad regime and Russian forces on various areas across Syria in the past 72 hours. The victims included 211 who were killed in Aleppo alone. Internationally banned weapons, most notably napalm, cluster bombs, and poison gas, have been widely used in the ongoing bombing campaign.
The Russian Defense Ministry on Friday announced it has used cruise missiles in the bombing of rebel-held areas across Syria, adding that Su-33 jet fighters took part in the bombing after taking off from the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov currently docked off the Syrian coast. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Office)
