Perspective: War crimes12 Hours. 4 Syrian Hospitals Bombed. One Culprit: Russia.

Published 14 October 2019

The Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria represents the Alawite minority (in 2011, about 75 percent of the Syrian population was Sunni , and about 12 percent were Alawites). Since the civil war in Syria began in 2011, the Assad regime, in the largest ethnic cleansing campaign since the end of the Second World War, has methodically, and successfully, pursued the goal of drastically reducing the number of Sunni Muslims in Syria. So far, the Assad regime has killed more than 500,000 Syrian Sunnis; has driven more than 5.6 million Sunnis out of Syria; and internally displaced more than 6.6 million Sunnis. One of the keys to Assad’s ethnic cleansing campaign has been the systematic destruction of hospitals and medical facilities in Sunni-majority areas and the killing of medical personnel. This strategy increases the number of dead and untreated wounded among the Sunnis, and along with the methodical destruction of water and sewage treatment facilities, makes life even more unbearable in Sunni areas of Syria. Since September 2015, the Russian air force has been doing most of the destruction of medical facilities and other civilian infrastructure in Sunni-majority areas.

The Russian Air Force has repeatedly bombed hospitals in Syria in order to crush the last pockets of resistance to President Bashar al-Assad, according to an investigation by the New York Times.

An analysis of previously unpublished Russian Air Force radio recordings, plane spotter logs, and witness accounts allowed the Times to trace bombings of four hospitals in just 12 hours in May and tie Russian pilots to each one.

Evan Hill and Christiaan Triebert write in the New York Times that the 12-hour period beginning on 5 May represents a small slice of the air war in Syria, but it is a microcosm of Russia’s 4-year military intervention in Syria’s civil war. A new front in the conflict opened this week, when Turkish forces crossed the border as part of a campaign against a Kurdish-led militia.

Russia has long been accused of carrying out systematic attacks against hospitals and clinics in rebel-held areas as part of a strategy to help Bashar al-Assad secure victory in the eight-year-old war.

Physicians for Human Rights, an advocacy group which tracks attacks on medical workers in Syria, has documented at least 583 such attacks since 2011, 266 of them since Russia intervened in September 2015. At least 916 medical workers have been killed since 2011.

Recklessly or intentionally bombing hospitals is a war crime, but Russia’s position as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council has shielded it from scrutiny and made United Nations agencies reluctant to accuse the Russian Air Force of responsibility.

Hill and Triebert quote the UN human rights office to say that from 29 April to mid-September, as Russian and Syrian government forces assaulted the last rebel pocket in the northwest, 54 hospitals and clinics in opposition territory were attacked. “At least seven had tried to protect themselves by adding their location to the deconfliction list, according to the World Health Organization,” Hill and Triebert write. “On 5 and 6 May, Russia attacked four. All were on the list.”