Interim Government: Assad Regime Slaughter Boys at Schools and Mosques

Abdul Rahman Hajj, adviser of the interim government, slammed the inaction of the international community towards Assad’s killing of children in schools and mosques of Aleppo using barrels bombs. 15 children were killed while they were taking lessons in Othman bin Affan Mosque in Aleppo. “The Assad regime has been targeting schools in the liberated areas, while turned other schools into detention centers or barracks for his thugs,” Hajj said. He also said that 11,000 children are detained by regime forces and are subject to torture on charges of spying for the opposition. The Assad regime has been systematically targeting mosques, churches, schools and houses of worship since the beginning of the revolution to sow division and nourish sectarianism in the Syrian society.” Hajj also said this policy lays bare the regime’s talk of seeking a political solution, and proves that they only believe in a military solution to counter the popular uprising.  Hajj pointed out that the intensified military attacks on Aleppo in this period can be attributed to its “strategic location near the Syrian-Turkish borders, which makes it the lung of the revolution.”  He concluded that Assad will not be able to undermine the people’s dreams or to convince the international community that there is no political settlement without him by trying to put the international community in front two options: Me or chaos. In a similar vein, a new UN report said that children in Syria have been tortured, maimed and sexually abused by Bashar al-Assad’s forces. The UN said regime forces had been responsible for the arrest, arbitrary detention, ill treatment and torture of children. Children as young as 11 have been detained by the Assad regime on suspicion of having links with armed groups. Children in government custody have reportedly been beaten with metal cables, whips and wooden and metal batons, and suffered electric shock, mock executions, cigarette burns, sleep deprivation and solitary confinement, and sexual violence, including rape and threats of rape, the report says. Khalid Al Saleh, the head of the Coalition’s Media Office said that “the brutal aerial campaign on Aleppo comes in the context of the continuing escalation exercised by the Assad regime on the city using various weapons, including explosive barrels, which forced more than 5,000 civilians to flee towards the Syrian-Turkish borders.” Saleh stresses that the “ongoing murder of civilians reveals lays bare the regime’s claims of trying to end the suffering of the Syrian  people, while this escalation puts the international community in front of their responsibilities in the need to move from watching these massacres to initiate actions and to work seriously to stop the killings in Syria.” (Source: Syrian Coalition)