Amnesty: Syrian military used cluster bombs in besieged area

Amnesty International today said the Syrian government has used internationally banned cluster munitions in attacks on a besieged rebel-held suburb of Damascus, accusing it of committing war crimes on "an epic scale."

The report came on the second day of UN-sponsored talks in Geneva in the latest push to find a political settlement to the nearly seven-year civil war in Syria.

The Amnesty International report called attention to the calamitous humanitarian situation at the doors of the Syrian capital, where the government and its backers have kept a suburban enclave of 400,000 people under siege since 2013.

The Eastern Ghouta region, one of hubs of the uprising against President Bashar Assad in 2011, is now facing the highest recorded malnutrition rate in the country since the outbreak of war, the UN reported on Wednesday.
 

Based on interviews with activists in eastern Ghouta and verification of open source videos and photographs, Amnesty said at least 10 civilians were killed in November because of the government's use of the banned Soviet-made cluster munitions.

The indiscriminate weapons, banned in over 100 countries, gravely endanger civilians because of their indiscriminate nature, Amnesty said.

"The Syrian government has shown callous disregard to the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people living in Eastern Ghouta," said Philip Luther, Amnesty International's Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

"But this recent escalation in attacks - clearly targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure using internationally banned cluster munitions - is horrific."

Amnesty said the munitions first appeared in Syria after Russia began strikes against anti-government groups in September 2015.

Witnesses interviewed by Amnesty said they saw cluster munitions projectiles, small bombs strapped to parachutes, used in densely populated market and residential areas.

The United Nations has said it is concerned about the ongoing violence in Eastern Ghouta, which has intensified since November 14.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the civil war, has recorded that at least 150 civilians, including 35 children, were killed since November 14 in the suburb, when a renewed round of intense fighting began.