The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) documented the killing of 57 civilians in Syria during the past August, including 13 children, six women, and six victims due to torture.
According to the SNHR report, issued Sunday, September 1, the Syrian regime did not register hundreds of thousands of citizens it had killed since March 2011, in the civil registry records, controlled the issuance of death certificates, and many of the families of the victims who were killed, whether by regime forces or by other parties, or the families of the missing and forcibly disappeared, were not able to obtain them. The regime only granted death certificates to those meeting criteria defined by the regime and its security apparatus.
Moreover, the vast majority of families are unable to obtain death certificates due to fear of being associated with someone who was detained by the regime and killed under torture, which would mark them as opposed to the Syrian regime, or record the victim as a “terrorist” if they were wanted by security forces. Additionally, a large segment of the victims’ relatives were forcibly displaced outside regime-controlled areas, according to the report.
Among the 57 people killed in August, the regime killed 21 civilians, including five children and six women, while Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) killed one civilian, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) killed four civilians, including two children and a woman, and 31 civilians, including five children, were killed by other factions.
The monthly report of the SNHR indicated that 39% of the victims were from Deir Ezzor, the highest percentage of victims among the governorates. Thirteen of them were killed by regime forces, followed by Daraa governorate with approximately 35%, where 17 victims were killed by other factions.
The SNHR documented a total of six killed under torture at the hands of the Syrian regime forces. Additionally, two massacres were committed by regime forces in August, bringing the total number of massacres since the beginning of the year to 11.
The report recorded at least seven attacks on civilian vital centers by the warring parties and the controlling forces in Syria, including five by regime forces and two incidents by all opposition armed factions and the Syrian National Army (SNA).
Evidence indicates that some of these attacks were directed against civilians and civilian objects. Indiscriminate shelling operations destroyed facilities and buildings, with reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes of attacking civilians were committed in many instances.
According to the report, neither the Syrian regime forces nor the Russian or International Coalition forces issued warnings before any attack, as required by international humanitarian law, a practice that has not occurred since the beginning of the popular uprising in Syria, demonstrating total disregard for civilian lives in Syria.
During the past July, the SNHR documented the killing of 55 civilians, 24% of whom were killed in unidentified source explosions, causing two massacres.