As many as 416 civilians were killed across Syria in May, mostly in the ongoing bombing campaign by the Assad regime and Russian forces in northwestern Syria, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said. The victims included medical personnel, members of the civil defense, and detainees who died while in custody.
In a report released on Saturday, the Monitoring group said that the Assad regime and its allied militias carried out systematic attacks on Syrian civilians.
According to the report, regime forces killed 269 civilians, including 51 children and 48 women, while the Russian forces killed 45 others, including 17 children and 10 women in the ‘de-escalation zone’ in northwestern Syria. The region has been subjected to intensifying bombing campaign in recent weeks.
The militia of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) is responsible for the deaths of 21 civilians, including six children, the SNHR said, adding that 73 civilians, including 28 children and three women, were killed by unidentified militant groups.
The victims included four medical workers who were killed in attacks by regime forces and a civil defense volunteer who was killed in a Russian airstrike.
According to the report, 14 people were killed under torture, including 11 who were in the regime forces’ custody, and two who were incarcerated by the PYD militia.
The Network also said that it counted 12 massacres in May, defining the word ‘massacre’ as any attack claiming the lives of at least five unarmed people. Regime forces were responsible for nine massacres, the Russian forces for two, and the PYD militia for one.
The Network stressed that the Assad regime violated the International Humanitarian Law, the Customary International Law, and UN Security Council resolutions, especially resolutions 2139, 2042 and 2254.
The report indicated that the international anti-ISIS coalition forces and the PYD militia violated the Customary International Law by causing civilian casualties.
The report pointed to a marked increase in the number of victims of the military operations the Assad regime and Russian forces are carrying out in the ‘de-escalation zone’ in northwestern Syria. It warned that these operations would cause a new humanitarian disaster. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
