The Syrian Regime Dropped About 11,000 Barrel Bombs on Daraa Governorate, Killing 1,177 Civilians, Forty Percent of Whom Were Women and Children

The Use of Barrel Bombs Has Contributed to the Displacement of Hundreds of Thousands, Paving the Way for Seizing Their Lands And Properties

The Hague – The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) today released a report entitled, ‘The Syrian Regime Dropped About 11,000 Barrel Bombs on Daraa Governorate, Killing 1,177 Civilians, Forty Percent of Whom Were Women and Children’, in which the group notes that the Syrian regime’s use of barrel bombs has contributed to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, paving the way for seizing their lands and properties.

The report notes that the Syrian regime began using barrel bombs as a weapon in July 2012. These lethal bombs, manufactured in designated workshops, were used by the regime to target areas that had broken free of its control. The report gives a brief description of the manufacturing process and the nature of the barrel bombs’ use, as well as explaining how the plentiful evidence confirms that barrel bombs are crude, indiscriminate weapons which it is virtually impossible to use with any precision to hit specific targets. As such, those deploying them cannot realistically distinguish between civilian and military targets in their deployment, meaning that their use constitutes a blatant violation of international humanitarian law.

Moreover, the report gives a brief summary of SNHR’s rigorous work on documenting the Syrian regime’s use of barrel bombs. On this issue, SNHR has released hundreds of news items and dozens of reports that have been used as sources by various international bodies and governments worldwide, especially since the adoption of UN Security Council resolution 2139, which explicitly condemned the regime’s use of barrel bombs, and requested that the UN Secretary-General submit periodic reports assessing whether or not the regime had stopped using these weapons.

The report notes that regime helicopters and fixed-wing warplanes dropped no fewer than 81,916 barrel bombs across Syria between July 2012 and March 2020, the last month in which barrel bombs were documented to have been used, killing at least 11,087 civilians, including 1,821 children and 1,780 women (adult female). In addition, barrel bombs were used in no fewer than 728 attacks on vital civilian facilities, including 104 attacks on medical facilities, 188 on schools, 205 on mosques, and 57 on markets. The regime also used barrel bombs loaded with toxic gases in 93 attacks, while barrel bombs loaded with incendiary substances were used in four attacks that targeted civilian areas.

This report forms part of SNHR’s work on documenting the use of barrel bombs. To that end, the report focuses on the use of these crude, indiscriminate weapons in Daraa governorate, which was among the first governorates where barrel bombs were used by the regime to target civilian populations, vital civilian facilities, and the areas furthest from the battlefronts in those parts of the governorate that broke free of the regime’s control. As SNHR documented in great detail, the regime’s use of barrel bombs in the governorate resulted in dozens of massacres of civilians, as well as widespread destruction, in addition to causing mass panic among civilian residents who were terrified at the potential consequences of the explosion of these lethal and devastating weapons.

The report documents that Syrian regime military aircraft and warplanes dropped about 11,153 barrel bombs on Daraa governorate between July 2012 and August 2018. The year 2015 saw the highest number of barrel bombs dropped on the governorate in one year, followed by 2017, then 2014. The barrel bombs dropped in those three years combined accounted for 75 percent of all barrel bombs dropped on the governorate.

The report documents 1,177 civilian deaths, including those of 272 children and 193 women (adult female), as a result of the Syrian regime’s use of barrel bombs in Daraa governorate between July 2012 and August 2018. The report also emphasizes that women and child victims accounted for about 40 percent of all civilian deaths from Syrian regime barrel bomb attacks in Daraa governorate, with this incredibly high percentage confirming that these attacks specifically targeted civilians. Meanwhile, barrel bombs were used in at least 39 attacks on vital civilian facilities in Daraa governorate in the same period. These included 11 attacks on medical facilities, six on schools, six on places of worship, and four on markets, according to SNHR’s database.

The report also notes that the Syrian regime, supported by Russia and Iran, has consistently followed a “scorched earth” policy against areas outside its control in Daraa governorate, carrying out military operations with intensive and brutal ground and air bombardment, which included the use of barrel bombs, all in order to force the inhabitants of these areas to accept settlement agreements imposed on the regime’s terms in exchange for the right to be free of the harrowing ordeal of bombardment and military operations.

The report stresses that the Syrian regime showed an utter disregard for UN Security Council resolution 2139, which was adopted on February 22, 2014, breaching it about 9,428 times in Daraa governorate alone. In this, the regime heavily and excessively used barrel bombs in its offensives on Daraa, and only ended its use of this indiscriminate weapon in August 2018, following its announcement that it had seized full control of the governorate. SNHR has recorded no use of barrel bombs in Daraa governorate since August 2018 as of this writing.

The report contains a number of conclusions drawn from SNHR’s exhaustive work on this issue, including confirmation that the Syrian regime’s objective in using barrel bombs has been to inflict as much human and material loss and devastation as possible in the areas inhabited by dissident populations, where the regime had lost control. That is to say that inflicting destruction is a goal in and of itself for the regime. Given the inevitable results of this destruction, it’s clear that the regime set out to deliberately displace as many residents as possible, specifically from those areas whose populations had expressed opposition to regime rule, and then to exploit these deliberately displaced people’s absence in any future reconstruction process, in which the regime would have the upper hand, thanks to an arsenal of quasi-legal laws and legislative articles passed specifically to allow it to seize control of the properties of missing and displaced persons. It must be noted that targeting residential areas with these lethal indiscriminate weapons amounts to a war crime, while killing civilians in this manner is a crime against humanity. The UN Security Council’s and the international community’s failure to deter the Syrian regime has emboldened the regime to continue to use these primitive and barbaric weapons.

The report calls on the UN Security Council to condemn the Syrian regime’s failure to comply with UN Security Council resolution 2139 and to hold it fully responsible for the destruction, displacement, and subsequent pillaging of land and property. Furthermore, the report calls on the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) to document all violations in Daraa governorate, particularly housing and property rights violations which were the result of the Syrian regime’s destroying tens of thousands of buildings in the governorate. Additionally, the report stresses that, at the level of the international community, no form of relations should be re-established with the Syrian regime, which has used primitive barrel bombs against its own people, killing, destroying, and displacing millions of Syrians. The report also makes a number of additional recommendations.