Air strike kills 30 as UN condemns Syrian regime

Updated August 16, 2012 10:39:08

Syrian warplanes have bombed the rebel-held town of Azaz near Aleppo, killing 30 people and wounding many more, activists say.

The attack flattened a string of houses and the dead included women and children.

"There are many people still trapped under the rubble," Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.

"The situation is horrific."

The deadly strike comes after a bomb exploded in central Damascus, and a mass kidnapping linked to Syria in neighbouring Lebanon raised the prospect of sectarian violence spreading.

In a video posted by activists, residents in Azaz - a northern town near the Turkish border - screamed and shouted "God is greatest" as they carried bloodied bodies from collapsed concrete buildings.

The video footage, which could not be immediately verified, showed crowds of residents wrestling with steel bars and pulling away a giant slab of concrete to reveal the dust-covered arm of a child.

"This is a real catastrophe," said an activist who gave his name only as Anwar.

"An entire street was destroyed."

Witness Abu Omar, a civil engineer in his 50s, added: "This was a civilian area. All these houses were packed with women and children sleeping during the fast. Only dogs can do something like this."

President Bashar al-Assad's forces have increasingly used helicopter gunships and warplanes against the lightly-armed insurgents.

The Organisation of Islamic Co-operation has suspended Syria's membership at an emergency meeting in Saudi Arabia.

The meeting of Muslim leaders in Mecca said the OIC suspended Syria because of its violent suppression of the popular uprising.

Video: Azaz rescuers sift through rubble - WARNING: FOOTAGE CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES

Pattern of atrocities

The latest deadly strike came as the United Nations released a report condemning Syrian regime figures at the highest levels of being complicit in atrocities against civilians.

UN investigators accused government forces and allied militia of carrying out "brutal" crimes against humanity, including the murder and torture of civilians in what appears to be state-directed policy.

Syrian rebels fighting to topple the regime have also committed war crimes, including executions, but these "did not reach the gravity, frequency and scale" of those carried out by the army and security forces, they said.


They found "reasonable grounds" to affirm that government forces and their allied shabbiha militia had committed crimes against humanity, war crimes and other gross violations.

Large-scale operations conducted in different governorates (provinces), their similar modus operandi, their complexity and integrated military/security apparatus indicate involvement at the highest levels of the armed and security forces and the government.

UN report on Syrian atrocities

"This would be impossible without the knowledge or even the approval without the highest levels of this chain of command," Mr Pinheiro said.


Government forces and shabbiha militia had raped men, women and children in acts that could be prosecuted as crimes against humanity, the investigators said.

Government troops had targeted aid workers of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, a war crime, they said.

Houla massacre

Completing a probe into a massacre in the town of Houla in May - which the government blamed on Islamist "terrorists" - the UN said government forces and shabbiha fighters were responsible for the killings of more than 100 civilians.

Forty-one children were among the Houla victims, including some who died during shelling, "but most appeared to have been shot at close range".

Each side had violated children's rights, the UN said. At least 125 youths under age 18, mainly boys, had been killed since February, while others were arbitrarily arrested without charge.


UN report on Syrian atrocities


Armed insurgents continue to use children as couriers or to help with medical evacuations, they said, also voicing concern at reports that rebels have deployed some minors as fighters.

The investigators said they would update their confidential list of suspects or units responsible for crimes and give it to UN rights boss Navi Pillay when their mandate ends next month.

The report called for the UN Security Council to take "appropriate action" given the gravity of documented violations by all sides in a 17-month conflict that investigators said had become a civil war.

The Security Council can refer a case to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the United Nations war crimes tribunal, but Russia and China - which have veto power - have been loathe to condemn Syria.

Lebanon kidnappings

The Syrian civil war has taken on overtly sectarian overtones, with most rebels belonging to the Sunni Muslim majority fighting against government forces rooted in Mr Assad's Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Regional powers are being drawn into the fight, with Sunni-led Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey supporting the rebels and Shiite Iran backing Mr Assad's government.

Fighting between Sunnis and Shiites is behind long civil wars in Syria's neighbours Iraq and Lebanon, and the West fears the violence could spread.

In Lebanon, gunmen belonging to a powerful Shiite clan abducted more than 20 men, including at least one Turk, one Saudi and several Syrian anti-Assad fighters, in retaliation for the capture of one of their kinsmen by rebels in Damascus.

The incident, in an area of Lebanon controlled by Hezbollah Shiite militants long allied to Assad and supported by Iran, raised the prospect of Syria's sectarian violence spilling over to its neighbour.

Video: Smoke rises after a bomb blast in central Damascus (YouTube: Storyful)



First posted August 16, 2012 07:34:28