Russia bombs civilians in Syria, including a pro Assad Alawite village

[Shamlawar Khurasani]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/russia-accused-striking-civilian-targets-syria-151002072135928.html

Notice how all Russian targets are hundreds of miles away from ISIS held territories:



Russian warplanes unleashed a new wave of air strikes against opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, amid concerns that many of Moscow's targets were civilian.

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Paris on Friday to discuss the air raids with his counterpart Francois Hollande, as Moscow maintained that the attacks were aimed at the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group and other "terrorist organisations".

France is a member of the US-led coalition against ISIL in Syria and Iraq. On Thursday, the countries of the coalition called on Russia to cease its aerial campaign, which they said was hitting the Western-backed Syrian rebels and civilians.

Inside Story: Will Putin save Syria's Assad?

"We express our deep concern with regard to the Russian military build-up in Syria and especially the attacks by the Russian Air Force," said a joint statement from Britain, France, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States, which was released by Ankara.

"These military actions constitute a further escalation and will only fuel more extremism and radicalisation," said the coalition, which also includes Canada.

"We call on the Russian Federation to immediately cease its attacks on the Syrian opposition and civilians," added the statement, which was published on the websites of foreign ministries in Turkey, Germany and France.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday that Russian air strikes targeted a field hospital in Lattamneh town in Hama province, adding that several doctors have been injured.

Russian jets on Thursday hit areas in the suburbs of Hama and Idlib, all areas under the control of loose coalitions of rebel groups, including the Western-backed Free Syrian Army.



Activists on the ground told Al Jazeera that the majority of the attacks hit civilian targets, a claim that Moscow, a key ally of Assad, denies.

In the Hama suburb of Habeet, an air strike at about 08:30pm local time killed three civilians, including a 5-year-old girl, and injured 12 others, according to opposition activist Hadi al-Abdullah.

"The destruction caused by the strike was massive. A two-storey house was completely flattened to the ground," he told Al Jazeera.

Earlier at 02:30pm local time, an attack on Jisr al-Shughur in the northwestern province of Idlib destroyed a mosque and killed two civilians, other activists told Al Jazeera.

In Idlib's Jabal al-Zawiya region, two children were among at least seven civilians killed in suspected Russian air strikes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The UK-based monitoring group said Russian air strikes on Syria have killed 28 people since they were launched on Wednesday.

'Information warfare'

Putin rejected allegations that civilians had been killed in Russian raids, dubbing the reports "information warfare".

Russia's defence ministry said the air raids were hitting several ISIL targets, including in the group's self-proclaimed capital, Raqqa.


Russia rejects criticism of air strikes in Syria
Both Western officials and activists on the ground expressed concern that they are attempting to hit opposition rebel fighters.

Both Idlib and Hama have had no ISIL presence since January 2014.

The initial Russian strikes on Wednesday hit Talbiseh, a suburb in the central Homs suburb that is under the control of the Free Syrian Army, Ahrar al-Sham, and Faylaq al-Sham group, and the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra Front.

The rebel groups had pushed back ISIL from the suburb six months ago.

The air strikes came as Russia presented a draft resolution to the UN Security Council that would call for consent from Damascus for attacks against ISIL in Syria.

Washington had previously blocked a similar resolution, and no date has been set for a vote on this one.

The Syrian conflict, which began as protests against Assad's regime in 2011, has escalated into a multi-faceted war that has drawn thousands of fighters from overseas.

Over the past four years, more than 250,000 people have been killed and half of the population displaced.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

[Shamlawar Khurasani]

Russia Is Using Old, Dumb Bombs, Making Syria Air War Even More Brutal

Russia Is Using Old, Dumb Bombs, Making Syria Air War Even More Brutal
Not only do Putin’s fighter jets not appear to be targeting ISIS, their inaccurate attacks look worryingly similar to those of Assad’s own regime—and could kill thousands of civilians.
On September 30, Russian warplanes launched their first air raids in Syria, striking eight targets around Homs, north of Damascus. In a second day of strikes on October 1, Moscow’s planes hit another five targets, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

The Kremlin insists it’s hitting militants from the so-called Islamic State. But the locations of the aerial strikes imply otherwise—that Russia’s bombing civilians and U.S.-backed rebels instead. Chillingly, video and photographs from Russia’s new air war seem to indicate that the attacks are inaccurate and indiscriminate.

Instead of dropping precision-guided munitions like the U.S.-led coalition does, the Russians are joining the Syrian air force in deploying unguided “dumb” bombs, apparently including deadly cluster munitions, which are much more likely to kill bystanders.

In short, Russia’s making Syria’s brutal air war even worse.

The Kremlin deployed 34 fighter-bombers and a spy plane to Latakia, a regime stronghold in western Syria, beginning around September 21. The warplanes were part of a contingent of Russian troops, vehicles, and missiles Moscow hopes will preserve Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s tattered regime, four years into Syria’s bloody civil war.

“There is no other way to settle the Syrian conflict other than by strengthening the existing legitimate government agencies, support them in their fight against terrorism,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said September 28.
But it was quickly evident that Russian air strikes weren’t bombing many, or any, terrorists, at least not using the U.S. government’s definition of “terrorist.”

The air raids on September 30 and October 1 hit areas outside of ISIS’s control—and instead struck towns occupied by U.S.-backed secular rebels who also threaten Assad’s rule. “I want to be careful about confirming information, but it does appear that [Russian attacks] were in areas where there probably were not ISIL forces,” U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told reporters, using another acronym for ISIS.
The Syrian National Council, a political group allied with anti-Assad rebels, claimed the Russian air strikes killed 36 civilians. The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 28 people died, including women and children.


Three dead in regime barrel bombs on Aleppo in northern Syria
AFP

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denied the accusation. “We are not supporting anyone against their own people,” he said. “We fight terrorism.”

But the Kremlin’s methods in Syria are worryingly similar to those of Assad’s own regime, which has relentlessly and indiscriminately bombed cities and towns under rebel control, killing thousands of civilians. The regime’s warplanes lack sensors for accurate targeting and the kind of guided munitions that the U.S. military famously sent streaking through buildings’ air vents during the 1991 Gulf War.

Instead, Syrian jets fire highly inaccurate rockets, lob unguided bombs, and even scatter cluster munitions that can pepper areas the size of football fields with lethal explosives. Worse, when the regime began running out of purpose-made aerial weapons, it began improvising bombs from metal barrels and explosive filler, and rolling them out of the cabins of high-flying helicopters.

Russia’s inaccurate attacks could have the same terrible effect as the Assad regime’s DIY munitions.
These so-called barrel bombs kill more Syrian civilians than ISIS does, according to Kenneth Roth, executive director of New York-based Human Rights Watch. “The apparent aim is to kill and terrorize civilians (and destroy civilian structures) so as to drive civilians from opposition-held areas and to send a warning of the misery that attends anyone whose neighborhood is taken by opposition groups,” Roth wrote in August.
Russia possesses plenty of air-to-ground weapons and so does not need to resort to barrel bombs. But its own inaccurate attacks could have the same terrible effect as the Assad regime’s DIY munitions. A video of the initial Russian attacks that the Kremlin released on September 30 appears to depict the small, scattered blasts of a cluster bomb.
More than 100 countries have signed on to an agreement banning the use of cluster bombs. The United States did not sign the agreement but nevertheless began phasing out operational use of cluster munitions in 2003. Russia is one of the few countries to continue producing and deploying cluster bombs on a wide scale.
To be clear, Russian pilots couldn’t be more accurate in their attacks even if they wanted to. While the United States and its allies have invested billions of dollars in precision munitions and the aerial sensors to guide them, Russia has continued to rely on mostly unguided weapons for air-to-ground attacks.

The Center for Analysis of Strategies and Tactics, a Moscow think tank, has criticized the Russian government for its “strange” and “unacceptable” failure to develop satellite-guided bombs and new long-range precision air-to-ground missiles, plus the targeting systems to direct them. “Russian air force bombers and tactical fighters rely on air-to-surface targeting technologies that are 30 years old,” Alexander Mladenov, a Russian aviation expert, pointed out in Combat Aircraft magazine.

In borrowing methods—and targets—from the Syrian regime’s own bloody air war, Russia is likely to kill more civilians, create more refugees, and make an already terrible conflict even worse. “The result of this kind of action will inevitably, simply be to inflame the civil war in Syria,” Carter said. http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...re-brutal.html

[Shamlawar Khurasani]

[Shamlawar Khurasani]

[Shamlawar Khurasani]

Airstrikes Kill Rescue Worker and Family of 5 in Syria

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/world/middleeast/airstrikes-kill-rescue-worker-and-family-of-5-in-syria.html?ref=world&_r=0&referer=http://t.co/cl552s1iqi

[HalloIsBack]

russians or putin dont care if civilians die or not

the most important is that the islamists die


it was always in this way: islamists attacked a school in daghestan, they tried to save as much as they could civilian lives and others died; civilians are just collateral damage


about any censure they dont give a ****!

[Insight]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...airstrike.html


Horrifying 'proof' Russians ARE bombing civilians in Syria: Tragedy of the boy, three, hit by huge shard of shrapnel lodged in forehead after airstrike

• WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
• Fadi, three, miraculously survived but is suffering swelling of the brain
• He was struck with piece of shrapnel when Rastan was bombed by Russian jets on Sunday
• Taken to hospital in Homs where surgeons spent hours removing shard
• Parents agreed for image to be used to show devastation being wrought

By Jay Akbar For Mailonline
Published: 09:05 GMT, 7 October 2015 | Updated: 13:54 GMT, 7 October 2015

Little Fadi screamed in agony, begging the doctors to remove the large shard of metal embedded deep in his skull.
The Syrian boy, 3, was struck by the two-inch piece of shrapnel when Russian jets bombed his hometown of Gharnatah, Homs, on Sunday.
The horrifying footage of Fadi's ordeal is being held up by doctors in Syria as proof that Russian jets are killing and maiming innocent civilians.









Moscow said its warplanes carried out three strikes on 'terrorist' buildings on Homs the day Fadi was struck down, including an ISIS command post near the city of Rastan where he lives.
The Kremlin insists their planes are fitted with highly accurate weapons, but there are fears the jets are firing out-dated cluster munitions which raise the risk of collateral damage.
Fadi was rushed to a nearby field hospital in Rastan, the Syrian city which has been pounded by Moscow's warplanes for a week. But Western governments claim there is little to no ISIS presence there.
Gruesome footage from the makeshift facility showed the young boy - his hair matted with blood -writhing on the slab of wood being used as an operating table.
Two men wearing white latex gloves held him down on the table but every time they went for the shard, Fadi recoiled in fear.
The Rastan Media Centre, which broadcast the video of Fadi, told MailOnline that his injury was so severe - and the makeshift facility so poor - that the doctors there did not know what to do.
Eventually they took him to the Hospital of Martyr Sauod in Homs where surgeons spent two-and-a-half hours removing the coarse chunk of metal from his head.
Miraculously, he survived but the shock to his head has left him with a haematoma - swelling underneath skin tissue caused by damage to the brain - a hospital spokesman told MailOnline.
He said Fadi is being cared for in the Intensive Care Unit where he was due to have CT scan yesterday. A message on the hospital's Facebook today said that Fadi had been discharged.
Fadi's family, who agreed to share the images of his progress with MailOnline, are by his side in hospital but are said to be too grief-stricken and angry to comment on his life-threatening injuries.



Russia has continued to bomb Rastan over the last two days, even though Western governments and terror experts, including the Institute for the Study of War, say the area, just north of Homs city, is under rebel control.
Moscow claimed its jets struck a command centre, two weapons depots and a communication centre near Rastan on Monday.
Reports today claim that Syrian forces have now begun a ground offensive in the areas targeted over the last week by Russian warplanes.
While Russian president Vladimir Putin has said there is no need for Russian troops to be deployed in combat at the moment to bolster the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, he has not ruled it out.
NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said yesterday that an 'increasing number' of Russian troops were on the ground in Syria and 'a large number of naval assets' were approaching its shores.
There have also been reports that Putin has sent the country's notorious special forces battalion, the Spetsnaz, to Syria.
Hundreds' of troops from Iran, the Lebanon-based Hezbollah Islamist group and rebels from Iraq have also converged on Syria over the last few weeks.
Since the airstrikes began on Wednesday, September 30, the country has come under fire for focusing its fire on moderate rebel positions - some of which have been given cash and training by the US - rather than ISIS.
One of Syria's main rebel groups, the National Coalition, claimed Russian airstrikes killed 36 civilians on the first day of strikes.







The cavalry: The leaflets are being dropped ahead of a possible ground invasion which could include Russia's special forces unit, the Spetsnaz

The group's leader Khaled Khoja said they dozens of 'innocent people' killed in Homs that day 'fought against extremism'.
On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, he said: 'All of the casualties were civilians.
'It was very obvious that the Russian intervention was to support the regime, to support more killings inside Syria, and will create a more chaotic atmosphere.'
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the next morning that the allegations were 'completely untrue'.
The US and its allies claim Russia joined the war to prop up Assad, who was said to be on the edge of a 'crushing defeat' when Russia intervened.
Its presence in the country has mobilised more than '40 insurgent groups' who have united to take down what they deem the 'occupiers' of Syria, the Guardian newspaper reported.
Russia has also angered Turkey by violating its airspace twice over the weekend. The country's officials claimed the first incident occurred on Saturday and the second on Sunday.
Through the Andalou news agency, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Russia that if it 'loses a friend like Turkey, with which it has conducted many businesses, it will lose a lot'.
The countries have polar-opposite positions on the Syrian war that has ravaged the country for more than four years, with Russia backing the embattled President Assad and Turkey calling for his removal.

[khushal]

Russia does not have technology that can hit with pin point accuracy. In Syria, they are revealing their weaknesses and inferior technology to NATO. They are making a huge mistake entering the Syrian war because now NATO will be more aggressive in their approach to Russia since now they know what they are not capable of.

But as far as the bombing campaign, they did the same thing in Afghanistan killing 2 million people.

[Insight]

Russia does not have technology that can hit with pin point accuracy. In Syria, they are revealing their weaknesses and inferior technology to NATO. They are making a huge mistake entering the Syrian war because now NATO will be more aggressive in their approach to Russia since now they know what they are not capable of.

But as far as the bombing campaign, they did the same thing in Afghanistan killing 2 million people.

Two US officials at the Pentagon have reported that some of the Russian cruise missiles fired from warships in the Caspian Sea by mistake crashed in Iran.