“Russian Forces Kill More Civilians than the International Coalition Killed in a Year”
“Targeting ISIL” is Russia’s new strategy to bombard Syrian cities since its military intervention started in 30 September 2015. To the Russians, any military body that fights the Syrian regime is labeled as a “terrorist” that must be eliminated. Russian political figures claimed that their aim is fight terrorism in Syria, embodied by ISIL; however, they are killing civilians and armed groups that oppose the Assad government which killed not less than 96% of the total number of victims.
SNHR’s methodology is based on certain criteria that documents victims’ names, casualty’s death toll, the most significant and relevant information, and a series of different eyewitnesses’ testimonies, as we also had to differentiate between the Syrian and the Russian shelling.
On 11 October 2015, we issued our first report that documented the Russian airstrikes on Syrian and its victims’ death toll. In this report, we update the information about the airstrikes, victims’ death toll and violations up till the 26th of October 2015, as we also included the initial violations that we previously documented since 30 September 2015 and until 6 October 2015 that we have verified.
Is it the Syrian Regime or ISIL?
“The scorched land” is the Syrian regime’s strategy when it comes to targeting vital facilities. Upon conducting periodic reports, we noticed that the regime targets more vital facilities in areas under the control of armed opposition groups and opts to almost entirely destroying it, however it targets facilities under ISIL’s control areas much less.
In the following report we present the outcomes of the targeted vital facilities of the past nine months of year 2015 which were committed by government forces. The Syrian regime targeted not less than 484 vital facilities since 1 January 2015 and up till 30 September 2015, detailed as follows:
– The regime targeted 452 regions under the control of armed opposition groups
– The regime targeted 88 regions under ISIL’s control
Accordingly, the percentage of targeted vital facilities in areas under the control of armed opposition groups was 84% while it was 16% in areas under ISIL’s control.
