Civilian killings in Syria are a ‘ticking time bomb,’ UN commissioner says

The coronavirus pandemic has created an opening for the Islamic State (IS) and other armed groups to carry out more attacks on Syrian civilians, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said today.

“We are receiving more reports every day of targeted killings and bombings from one end of the country to the other, with many such attacks taking place in populated areas,” Michelle Bachelet said in a news release. “The deteriorating situation is a ticking time-bomb that must not be ignored.”

“Various parties to the conflict in Syria, including [IS], appear to view the global focus on the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to regroup and inflict violence on the population,” she said.

The UN Human Rights Office has documented an uptick in civilian killings across Syria during the month of April, with at least at least 35 deaths due to attacks involving improvised explosive devices (IEDs), compared with seven the month prior. Since the beginning of March, the UN office recorded 33 IED attacks, 26 of which occured in residential areas and seven in markets.

A truck bombing in Afrin killed dozens, including at least 29 civilians, at a market in late April. The Kurdish YPG militia denied responsibility for the blast in the northern Syrian city, which was seized by Turkish troops and their allied rebel groups in March 2018.

Most of the recent attacks, the UN office said, took place in north and eastern Syria in areas under the control of Turkish troops and Turkey-backed Syrian rebel groups or the rival Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

IS lost its final stronghold in the eastern Syria city of Baghouz in March 2019, but remnants of the group continue to pose a challenge for the SDF and the US-led military coalition. Last weekend, IS fighters temporarily took control of a large prison in the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakah in what marked the second such riot in a little over a month.

The group has been stepping up attacks and assassinations in Syria’s eastern desert region, as well as in neighboring Iraq. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor, reported that IS attacked a government military convoy in an area between Deir ez-Zor and Homs provinces Thursday, killing 11.

Earlier this week, the US-led military coalition and its SDF partners raided an IS cell in Deir ez-Zor, leading to the arrest of a militant.

In the northwestern province of Idlib, a cease-fire reached in March between Turkey, which supports the opposition, and Russia, which backs President Bashar al-Assad, is largely holding. Bachelet noted that sporadic clashes and ground strikes are continuing in the countrysides of western Aleppo and southern Idlib.

A renewed government offensive in December displaced roughly 1 million people in Idlib, most of them women and children. Some 300 civilians were killed in the region in the first two months of this year, most of them in Russian or regime airstrikes, according to the UN.