Human Rights Guardians file complaint with the decision on extrajudicial killings of victims as a result of the targeting of civilians and children in Kafr Ta’alwa and Nooran area of western Aleppo countryside.
At 12:00 p.m. on 21-1-2020, Russian warplanes targeted the village of Kafr Ta’alwa in the western of Aleppo countryside. A house that contained displaced civilians from Aleppo city, killing a whole family consisting of a father, a mother and six children, as well as of a 22-year-old man. The civil defense team went to the village and there was destruction in the house and its surroundings and the bodies of the family were in pieces recovered by the Civil Defense Teams (White Helmets).
The place is civilian and the village targeted that day by three raids from Russian warplanes according to the circulars of the observatories.
As for the killings in the Nooran area:
At 4:24 p.m., Russian planes raided the village in two separate places, the first in the center of the town, where the rescue teams of the white helmets were able to pull them out of the rubble and remove an elderly man, who was alive and the injured were rescued and send to the hospital.
The second raid was carried out in Kafr Nooran by a popular sailor crammed with civilian homes and there were fuel-selling spaces within the area. These targeted places are civilian.
A family of displaced people from southern Idlib was killed in the raid. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the White Helmets and observatories said that a Russian warplane took off from the Military Airport of Khmeimim and carried out in the western Aleppo countryside.
Human Rights Guardians believe that these cases are extrajudicial killings, which are the responsibility of the Russian and Syrian alliances, which are crimes against humanity and war crimes, and that an immediate investigation should be opened, those responsible held accountable and the victims compensated.
Human Rights Guardians believe that the above-mentioned attacks violate the principle of discrimination, enshrined in Rule 1 and Rule 7 of the ICRC’s study of customary international humanitarian law, which obliges parties to the conflict to distinguish between combatants and civilians as well as between civilian objects.
The military, as mentioned, was targeting civilian residential areas, as well as the principle of military necessity stipulated in Article 50 of the Red Cross study on customary humanitarian law.
Antakya – Hatay
11th of March 2020
