Human Rights Watch urges arms embargo against Syria after regime airstrikes

Monitoring group Human Rights Watch urged the UN to impose an arms embargo on the Syrian government Thursday to “stop indiscriminate attacks” against civilians, AFP reported.

The monitor said Thursday the UN has failed to implement resolutions that would protect the lives of Syrian civilians.

Mohammed Rayhan had been in the centre of the town of Douma near Damascus on Sunday, when it was targeted by government airstrikes, killing over 100 people. Syrian authorities did not comment directly on the strikes other than to criticize the UN envoy, Staffan de Mistura, who had called the strikes on Douma “devastating” and “unacceptable”. Two first responders described a chaotic scene, with the dead and injured scattered on the streets. The government said it was a response to a rebel mortar strike last week that killed six people.

Later that afternoon, airstrikes hit a residential area in Douma known as Masaken, or Abed al-Raouf. “We had to run 400 meters to the cemetery under the sniper’s bullets to bury my cousin”, he said. “They do not even want us to bury our martyrs”.

The August 16 airstrikes are among the deadliest recent attacks carried out by Damascus. Uncredited/AP The bombing killed more than 110 people and is one of the deadliest air stikes in Syria’s five-year civil war.

The Syrian government has repeatedly been accused of carrying out indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas during the conflict, which has killed an estimated 250,000 people since it began in 2011.

HRW said the Security Council should also demand that the government lift the unlawful siege on eastern Ghouta, which restricts civilians, the wounded, and the sick from being able to leave the area and impedes the delivery of humanitarian and medical assistance and goods needed for survival.

Mohammed Rayhan was at a marketplace in Douma Sunday when it was bombed by the Assad regime, and then bombed again during an air raid to recover bodies.

As the director of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights explained, stories like Rayhan’s are common.

He says the Security Council should bring the same commitment to ending indiscriminate strikes on civilians as it has to chemical attacks.