‘Why is the World Doing Nothing?’ – Cluster Bomb Attack by the Syrian Army in Aleppo

A child in a field hospital in Aleppo, Syria after sustaining injuries in a cluster bomb attack by the Syrian armed forces on a residential area on March 1, 2013.

A child in a field hospital in Aleppo, Syria after sustaining injuries in a cluster bomb attack by the Syrian armed forces on a residential area on March 1, 2013.

By Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Adviser

In a field hospital, which I won’t name for security reasons – too many field hospitals have been bombed already – a little boy of 7, Abdo al-Dik, was shaking like a leaf and moaning in pain with deep lacerations to his abdomen and legs.

Relatives had just collected his 3-year-old brother Nizar’s body for burial. Another brother, 8-year-old Subhi, was still missing as of 6 p.m.

In the same hospital room, 6-year-old Mustafa Ali was lying in a bed with shrapnel injuries to the head, neck and shoulders – alone and waiting for someone from his family to come find him. He told me that he was visiting his relatives when the air strike happened; a neighbor said that the child’s relatives were badly injured and he did not know whether they had survived.

In another room, Fahad, a 9-year-old boy with a nasty shrapnel injury to his left leg, kept repeating: “Baba (Father), I don’t want to die, I want to go home.”

He was lucky though as his injury was relatively minor, compared to those of the other children I saw.

These children are some of the victims of a multiple cluster bomb attack launched on the morning of Friday, March 1 against a densely populated residential housing estate in Aleppo.

The attack killed at least 19 and injured more than 60 – we won’t know the final death and injury toll for some days, as some families fled the area for fear of further attacks. The more seriously injured were evacuated to hospitals in Turkey and the rest are being treated in various field hospitals around the city.

Many of the victims were children who were playing in the alleys and gardens of the housing estate.

The attack took place at about 11.30 a.m. I arrived in Aleppo shortly after and went to the area – the Masaken Hanano district, to the east of the city centre. It was much worse than initial reports suggested.

The Syrian air force dropped nine Soviet-made RBK cluster bombs – each carrying up to 150 cluster submunitions – in the middle of a large housing estate. I found one bomb eight meters from the front door of one of the buildingsthree in a small garden between the buildingsone on a rooftoptwo in a small empty space between the buildings; one in the middle of an alleyand one in another garden.

I also found unexploded cluster submunitions (bomblets) all over the placeon the roofs of buildingson the pavements and in the alleys and gardens between the buildings. Members of armed opposition groups who control the area rapidly filled a sack with the unexploded bomblets that were left lying around. The buildings’ walls were peppered with shrapnel, and here and there are holes where the lethal bomblets penetrated the walls, exploding inside people’s homes.

Noura, a 20-year-old woman I found in one of the hospitals, told me that she was injured in her apartment. Her sister who was by her side asked me: “Why is the world doing nothing while we continue to be bombed to pieces every day, even inside our homes?”

I had no answer.

Whoever orders these relentless indiscriminate attacks – including with internationally banned cluster bombs – and the pilots who drop these bombs do so knowing that they will kill and maim children and other civilians who have nothing to do with the conflict.

They should know too that one day they will be held accountable for such war crimes.

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2 thoughts on “‘Why is the World Doing Nothing?’ – Cluster Bomb Attack by the Syrian Army in Aleppo

  1. If you care about Syria, America, stop funding and arming Al Qaeda. You planned since 2007 to overthrow the government using AL QAEDA BY NAME. Now the bloodbath is in full swing and you feign remorse, and outrage at the resulting carnage? (see Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh's "The Redirection – New Yorker, 2007).

    Why's Amnesty not talking about the weekly indiscriminate car bombings carried out, proudly by the FSA and Al Qaeda? You see, Amnesty is dusted off ahead of each terrorist/NATO offensive to moan and groan about the Syrian government, and spin/obfuscate any and all atrocities carried out by admittedly sectarian terrorists. Amnesty is a fraud, co-opting legitimate concerns for human rights, and perverting them to sell America's war machine.

  2. How can the world be so cruel? What good will ever come from hurting children or women? What kind of person does this? I can't even read about this anymore. It makes me sick.

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