Elderly women shot dead by Assad troops
Radio messages between regime troops prove that non-combatants are being deliberately killed
SYRIAN government forces shot elderly civilians in the rebel-held north west and attacked Turkish posts in violation of a ceasefire deal, intercepted radio communications shared with The Daily Telegraph disclose.
President Bashar al-assad’s regime has often been accused of targeting non-combatants but rarely is there clear evidence to prove attacks are premeditated. The Telegraph heard communication between Syrian troops opening fire on what they identified to be a group of old women. “She looks elderly,” one of the soldiers tells another. “It’s clear she’s coming to pack her belongings, then she’s leaving.”
The women are seen collecting belongings from their home in Mizanaz village in western Aleppo as they prepare to flee a regime advance. Gunfire is heard and the women die in the attack – a war crime under international law.
Attacks on civilians have become part of the Syrian government’s strategy of terrorising local populations until they flee rebel-held areas, making them easier to capture. Recordings also reveal Syrian forces are deliberately attacking Turkish military posts in Idlib.
Turkey yesterday urged Vladimir Putin to “restrain” the Syrian regime in Idlib, where Russia has been fighting alongside Damascus.
Syrian soldiers track the car through a viewfinder as it approaches a house in western Aleppo, the new front line in the battle between the government and the rebels. There is something unusual about the scene.
“There are women driving. Why are they headed to a battlefield?” one of the troops asks over the radio. “She looks elderly,” another replies. “It’s clear she’s coming to pack her belongings, then she’s leaving.”
They watch the women gathering clothes and other personal items as they prepare to flee a regime advance in the village of Mizanaz, just east of the town of al-atarib in western Aleppo. Despite the clear identification, the troops decide to shoot. “I am watching them, they are about to enter a house. Yallah! [Go] I am firing now,” the first soldier says before rapid machine gun fire can be heard. “Fire, fire, I am observing for you,” replies the second. President Bashar al-assad’s regime is regularly accused of deliberate attacks on civilians – a war crime under international law – but rarely has there been such clear evidence of one.
The Telegraph today publishes radio communications which prove the Syrian army is targeting civilians in its latest campaign on the opposition-held North West. The recordings were made on Feb 11 by spotters at a nearby observatory, who managed to intercept the army’s frequency in the area around Atarib. They were passed to The Telegraph by independent activist group Macro Media Centre (MMC). Last month, this paper published leaked recordings from the same group revealing the presence of Iranian and Afghan militias fighting with assassinated Qassem Soleimani’s Quds Force alongside the regime in northern Syria.
The soldiers heard in the recordings are from the Syrian army’s 25th Division, a notorious elite special mission force known as the Tiger Forces. Local reports corresponding with the date and time of the radio communications suggest the women were killed in the shooting.
Attacks on civilians form part of the government’s strategy of terrorising local populations until they flee rebel-held areas, making them much easier to capture. The regime has also been found to hit vital civilian structures, such as bakeries, schools and hospitals, which has the effect of breaking down societies and forcing them to surrender more quickly.
The Syrian government and its Russian allies are responsible for over 90 per cent of civilian deaths since the start of the war in 2011, according to figures from the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR). Some 70 to 75 per cent of them were victims of artillery or air force shelling. Nearly 300 civilians have been killed in attacks this year in north-west Syria, the United Nations said this week, with 93 per cent of the deaths caused by Syrian and Russian forces.
The UN stopped keeping a tally of the total number of dead in Syria when the number reached 400,000 in 2014. Using estimates provided by war monitors, the conflict has now claimed at least a million lives. It enters its 10th year next month, with no end in sight.
Russia has blocked almost all attempts to investigate possible Syrian government war crimes at the UN Security Council, where it has a veto. Syria is also not signed up to the Rome
Statute, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court, meaning that it has not been possible to bring an international criminal case against Assad or his government.
“Throughout the war, the Syrian army and pro-regime militias repeatedly targeted civilians, including pregnant women, by sniper fire,” Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow at Foreign Policy Research Institute and leading Syria expert, told The Daily Telegraph. “Yet this is the first clear evidence I have seen of such wilful targeting from the regime. These war crimes and targeting of civilians, simple displaced persons seeking to collect their belongings, is one reason civilians are fleeing from regime forces, rather than remaining in their homes or attempting to cross into regime-controlled areas.”
Around 900,000 people – two thirds of them women and children – have fled their homes, and many are now trapped between the closed Turkish border and advancing pro-government troops.
The recordings also show that Syrian forces have deliberately attacked Turkish posts in Idlib. Turkey set up 12 “observation points” as agreed under a de-escalation deal for the last-remaining opposition stronghold of Idlib and adjacent western Aleppo, negotiated with Russia in 2018. In its latest push into opposition territory, the Syrian army overran most of the points and fired on others, in violation of the deal.
“Send me the co-ordinates of the Turkish post, Somar,” an artillery officer asks his comrade, addressing him by name. A signals officer replies: “It’s in front of you to the left, Sobhi. 07215313.” The co-ordinates relay a post manned by the Turkish military just a few miles from where the women were shot in Mizanaz. There was an attempted artillery attack by the regime on the position not long after the Feb 12 radio communications.
The battle for Idlib has seen Assad’s army and Turkish forces engage directly for the first time. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president, has given the Syrian government and its Russian backers until the end of the month to halt their advance.
“Syrian regime forces hit Turkish observation posts on multiple occasions, so the likelihood of these strikes being accidental diminished by the day, but it’s still jarring to hear it stated so clearly,” said Ms Tsurkov.
Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said: “For sceptics in the general public, this should be a wake-up call about which actors are pushing escalation. It’s also a humiliation for Russia, who Ankara still views as a potentially trustworthy party to the [2018] Sochi agreement, which mandated the establishment of Turkish military posts inside Idlib.”