The Syrian Archive, a Berlin-based data collection project, published a new report on Tuesday that showed that the unlawful attacks on civilians in Aleppo in the second half of 2016 had mainly been perpetrated by Russian and Syrian forces.
Sifting through over 50,000 videos from the devastated city, the team of six - three of whom are Berlin-based volunteers working on top of day jobs - were able to verify some 1,748 videos of human rights violations in Aleppo and its surroundings.
"While attacks and violations have been committed by all parties, including the international coalition, Turkish forces, and rebel groups, the visual evidence analyzed in this report shows that overwhelmingly, Syrian and Russian forces were responsible for the largest amount of human rights violations in Aleppo city and suburbs during this period," said Hadi al Khatib, the project's founder, presenting the report in Berlin.
This is a bolder statement than the one made by the United Nations' Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) - in its report published on March 14.
The OHCHR report, which was based on interviews rather than video evidence, did not mention Russia specifically, preferring instead to say that "all parties to the Syrian conflict" continued to perpetrate "violations and abuses which resulted in civilian casualties or otherwise impacted the civilian population." Though the OHCHR did admit that the Syrian Air Force and "pro-government forces" were deliberately targeting schools and hospitals with airstrikes.
The report also showed that weapons known to cause particularly heavy civilian casualties - barrel bombs, cluster bombs, incendiary bombs, and chlorine gas - were being dropped from warplanes on residential areas, which is a war crime.
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http://m.dw.com/en/syrian-archive-finds-overwhelming-russian-atrocities-in-aleppo/a-38169808