Russian airstrikes in Syria killed at least 200 civilians and the Russian government might have lied to cover up the deaths and widespread damage to residential areas, according to a new Amnesty International report.
The human rights organization said Tuesday that some of the strikes seemed to be directly launched at civilian areas, with no clear military target to be found, and “show evidence of violations of international humanitarian law.” In a statement, Philip Luther, who directs Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa program, said the strikes “may amount to war crimes.”
The Russian Defense Ministry disputes the allegations in the report, which it says includes “fake information” and “trite clichés,” a ministry spokesman told Reuters.
Russia has been performing airstrikes in Syria since Sept. 30, independent of the United States-led coalition that is dedicated to destroying Islamic State interests. Russian government authorities have publicly stated that the airstrikes are only aimed at terrorist targets.
However, the Amnesty report cites interviews with witnesses and survivors of those attacks, as well as analysis from weapons experts, as evidence that some of the airstrikes occurred in areas where “there were no military targets or fighters in the immediate vicinity.”
The report references six specific attacks in Homes, Idleb and Aleppo between September and November. Amnesty alleges five of those strikes targeted residential areas, while the sixth occurred very close to a hospital.
Amnesty referenced a Nov. 29 incident in which three missiles hit a busy public market in Idleb, killing 49 civilians. One man told the group that he spoke to a woman who was “crying beside a line of dead bodies” after her husband and three children died in the attack. In researching the report, Amnesty said it determined that there were no apparent military targets in the area.
Amnesty’s report also references an Oct. 1 airstrike against a mosque in Idleb, which caused the deaths of two civilians. A witness told Amnesty there weren’t any military targets within 500 meters of the mosque. But the report cites comments Russian officials publicly made about the airstrike, which the officials said targeted Islamic State interests and destroyed a command post.
Weeks later, after reports surfaced that the mosque had been destroyed, Russian officials said the claims were fabricated and showed a satellite picture of the mosque supposedly still intact. However, Amnesty reported the picture showed a different mosque than the one destroyed in the attack.
Amnesty called for independent investigations into the alleged transgressions, saying Russian leaders “failed to take feasible precautions to avoid, or at least minimize, harm to civilians and damage to civilian objects.”
Amnesty said it also has evidence Russia used unguided bombs in civilian areas, as well as widely criticized cluster bombs. Reuters reported Russia’s Defense Ministry denied using any cluster bombs in Syria.
Amnesty reported that it is also “researching and documenting its concerns” about the airstrikes conducted by the United States-led coalition.