The UN Security Council on Thursday expressed its outrage at recent attacks in Syria targeting civilians and medical facilities, stressing these actions may amount to war crimes.
In a press statement, the 15-nation council recalled the “obligation to distinguish between civilian populations and combatants, and the prohibition against indiscriminate attacks and attacks against civilians and civilian objects.”
“The members of the Security Council reaffirmed the primary responsibility of the Assad regime to protect the population in Syria and reiterated that parties to the armed conflict bear the primary responsibility to take all feasible steps to ensure the protection of civilians,” the statement said.
The members also expressed their “deep concern at violations of the cessation of hostilities endorsed by Security Council resolution 2268 (2016).”
The members of the Security Council reiterated their call “on all parties to immediately implement in full the provisions of Security Council resolutions relating to Syria, including resolutions 2139 (2013), 2165 (2014) 2191 (2014) and 2258 (2015), as well as resolution 2286 (2016) relating to health care in armed conflict.”
Regime forces on Thursday resumed bombing of villages in Turkmen Mount area of rural Latakia with heavy artillery, while mortar shells fired by regime forces landed not very far from the Yamadiya IDP camp near the Turkish border.
Over 30 civilians, including women and children, were killed last week in an airstrike by regime forces on the Kammouna IDP camp in rural Idlib.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) on Thursday said it had documented over 559 breaches of the truce by regime forces through the use of barrel bombs in attacks on rebel-held areas during April 2016.
SNHR said that it had documented 23 massacres by regime and Russian forces in April that claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians. The Network also said that it had recorded 26 detainees killed under torture in Assad’s prisons in the same month. (Source: Syrian Coalition + Agencies)
