The Assad regime and its supporters continue to commit massacres against Syrian civilians despite signing on the ceasefire and the “de-escalation zones” agreements sponsored by international parties, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said.
According to a report issued on Tuesday, the monitoring group said that the Assad regime and Russian forces carried out 92 of the 188 massacres recorded in the first half of 2017.
The report listed 61 massacres carried out by the Assad regime, 31 massacres by Russian forces, 58 massacres by the international anti-ISIS coalition, 15 by the ISIS extremist group, 4 by the militia of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), and 14 massacres by groups the Network said it could not identify.
According to the report, 15 massacres were committed in Deir Ezzor province, 11 in Rural Damascus, 10 in Idlib, 7 in each of Hama and Dara’a, 5 in Homs, 4 in Aleppo, and one in each of Damascus and Raqqa.
The report said that the international coalition forces carried out 47 massacres in Raqqa, 7 in Deir Ezzor, two in Hasaka, and one in each of Idlib and Aleppo. The extremist group ISIS committed 8 massacres in Deir Ezzor, 6 in Raqqa, and one in Hama.
The massacres claimed the lives of 2,025 people, including 720 children and 366 women. Women and children accounted for around 54 percent of the total number of victims, a percentage that SNHR described as “very high.”
In its annual report published on the occasion of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the SNHR said on Friday that up to 13,000 detainees, including 161 children and 41 women, have died under torture in the prisons of the Assad regime since 2011.
The Network concluded its report by calling on the Assad regime to allow unfettered entry of relief and human rights organizations, the International Commission of Inquiry, and journalists. It also called on the UN Security Council and international institutions concerned with human rights issues to shoulder their responsibilities towards the widespread crimes and violations taking place in Syria. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department + Agencies)
