Assad regime barrel bombs killed 94 civilians in 2017

ANKARA

The Assad regime has killed 94 civilians with barrel bombs in the first half of 2017, according to an NGO report released on Sunday.

Out of the 94 civilians, 41 were children and 20 were women, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) report said.

The Assad regime dropped 4,252 barrel bombs in multiple parts of Syria during the same period, according to the report.

The report said most of the barrel bombs were dropped in the Daraa province in southern Syria, where 42 civilians lost their lives ,15 of them children and 12 women.

Still according to the report, the Assad regime dropped 2,031 barrel bombs on Daraa in the first 6 months of 2017. The rest of the bombs hit the Damascus suburbs, Hama, Aleppo, Homs, Idlib, Raqqah and Quneitra.

Barrel bomb attacks by the Assad regime occurred mostly in June, with some 1,271 dropped in different parts of Syria, killing 14 civilians.

Still according to the report, the Assad regime used barrel bombs on four mosques, four health facilities, two civilian defense centers, one shopping center and one bakery.

According to previous SNHR reports, 17,318 barrel bombs were dropped in Syria in 2015, killing 2,032 civilians.

In 2016, 653 civilians were killed by 12,958 barrel bombs.

While UN officials say hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the Syrian conflict to date, Syrian regime officials say the total death toll is closer to 10,000.

Reporting by Adham Kako; Writing by Fatih Hafız Mehmet