I. Background: From Protests to Armed Conflict

Since anti-government protests began in March 2011,the Syrian authorities have committed a wide range of human rights violations in their attempt to quell the uprising.[1] As demonstrations spread throughout the country in 2011, Syrian government forces, primarily the notorious security services, regularly used force, often lethal, against largely peaceful demonstrators.[2]

Security forces also launched a massive campaign of arrests, arbitrarily detaining hundreds of protesters across the country, routinely failing to acknowledge their detention or provide information on their whereabouts, and subjecting them to torture and ill-treatment.[3] Human Rights Watch documented hundreds of cases of torture in at least 27 different detention centers around the country,where detainees (including children) were subject to a broad range of torture methods, including prolonged beatings, the use of electricity, sexual assault, burning with car battery acid, the pulling of fingernails, and mock execution.[4]

Summary and extrajudicial executions of defecting soldiers,opposition fighters, opposition supporters, as well as civilians who appeared to have had no part in the confrontation with the authorities other than being residents of opposition strongholds, also became part of the government’s attempt to stop the demonstrations.[5]

Unable to quell the protest movement, the Syrian army launched a military assault on Dar`a in April, 2011, in Tal Kalakh in May, and in Baniyas and Latakia along Syria’s coast in May and August respectively.[6] The army succeeded in taking control of Dar`a, but this was followed by even more protests in other parts of the country, and elements of the opposition increasingly took up arms against the government in September 2011, further militarizing the conflict.

Syrian authorities launched another major offensive in February 2012, when its forces started using artillery, sometimes large-caliber, to bombard civilian neighborhoods in Homs and other areas under the control of opposition groups.[7] The army deployed tanks in large numbers as it moved to retake control of Hama. Government forces also planted landmines along the borders of Lebanon and Turkey, and used civilians as human shields during arrest operations, troop movements, and attacks on towns and villages in northern Syria.[8] The military attacks forced increasing numbers of Syrians to seek refuge in neighboring countries.

By May 2012, Human Rights Watch found that the fighting in some parts of Syria had reached the level of an armed conflict, making international humanitarian law, or the laws of war, applicable in those areas.[9] The International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) in July 2012 publicly concluded that the situation in Syria amounted to a non-international armed conflict.[10] 

The conflict in Syria entered a new stage during the summer of 2012, when opposition forces solidified control over significant territory in the north and conducted military operations in Damascus and Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria. Armed opposition groups also committed abuses in areas under their control, subjecting detainees to ill-treatment and torture, and committing extrajudicial or summary executions in Aleppo, Latakia, and Idlib.[11]

In July 2012, armed opposition forces launched attacks in Damascus in an operation termed the "Damascus Volcano and Syrian Earthquake."[12] The height of this operation was a bomb attack on the National Security headquarters on July 18 that immediately killed three senior officials: Defense Minister Daoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani.[13] Media reports indicate that National Security Chief General Hisham Ikhtiyar died on July 20 from injuries sustained in the blast.[14]

Following this attack and the increased presence of opposition fighters in some suburbs of Damascus, the Syrian government deployed its air force, artillery, and ground troops into some Damascus neighborhoods and surrounding towns. In areas where government troops and pro-government militias entered, numerous reports emerged of Syrian security forces summarily executing civilians and captured members of the armed opposition. One of the deadliest of these operations occurred in the Damascus suburbs of Daraya and Ma`damiya between August 20 and 26, when according to local residents Syrian security forces heavily shelled the area before entering and executing a number of people.

Following losses in Damascus in July 2012, opposition fighters concentrated efforts in northern Syria, particularly in Aleppo governorate, where fighting continues at the time of writing, as the opposition struggles to gain and maintain control over territory.

Opposition fighters also increasingly began using car bombs and other explosives throughout Syria to target security force members and infrastructure. In some cases, as with the explosions near a military officers’ club in Aleppo on October 3, 2012,[15] a car bomb near a police station in Bab Touma, Damascus on October 21,[16] and reported suicide bomb attacks targeting a military camp in Dar`a on November 10, dozens of civilians were reportedly killed or injured.[17]

As fighting has intensified, the humanitarian situation in Syria has deteriorated, and the number of refugees has climbed. As of February 27, 2013, 953,310 individuals from Syria in neighboring states had been registered as refugees or were awaiting registration, according to the UN.[18] In February 2013 the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that two million people were internally displaced, many living in intolerable conditions, and that the conflict was affecting more than four million people inside Syria.[19] According to OCHA, aid delivery continues to be encumbered by high levels of insecurity.

Air Strikes and Casualties

The first documented instance of a Syrian government aerial attack known to Human Rights Watch was a helicopter attack on the town of Azaz in northern Aleppo on March 22, 2012.[20]By late May, the Syrian Air Force was using helicopters to launch attacks almost daily, particularly in opposition-controlled areas in northern Syria.[21] By the end of July 2012, the Syrian government’s reliance on air power increased, and media outlets reported the first jet attack in Aleppo city on July 24.[22]

As of March 22, 2013, the Violations Documentation Center (VDC), a Syrian monitoring group working in coordination with a network of Syrian activists called the Local Coordination Committees, had registered the names, date of death and place of death of 4,472 individuals who had been killed in aerial attacks, most of the civilian.[23] In the 55 attacks investigated by Human Rights Watch, aerial attacks resulted in the deaths of at least 152 civilians. In these cases, the VDC database was either accurate or undercounted the number of civilian deaths.

The governorates where the VDC has recorded the greatest number of deaths from air strikes are the Damascus countryside (1,212 deaths), Aleppo (1,277 deaths), and Idlib (787 deaths).

For several towns in opposition-controlled areas, air strikes are the most frequent cause of death for those registered in the VDC database. For example, in Azaz, in Aleppo governorate, 45 of 75 deaths between August 1, 2012, and March 2013 registered in the VDC database were caused by air strikes.[24] In Souran, five of six deaths registered in the same period were caused by air strikes.