Assad denies using barrel bombs, just as barrel bombs fall on Aleppo

BEIRUT, Lebanon — At the moment Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was appearing on television screens to deny that his army uses barrel bombs, three helicopters were hovering over Aleppo.

Minutes later, two of them released their cargo — the very weapon that the president said they did not possess, let alone use.

That is according to volunteers with the Syrian Civil Defense (SDC) — a network of civilian search and rescue workers operating across Syria.

The convergence of the denial and the act itself is no surprise, given the frequency with which monitors say the crude explosive devices are used in Syria.

It is not yet known how many were killed or injured in Tuesday’s attack, but due to the indiscriminate nature of the bombs — literally barrels filled with dynamite and metal objects — civilian casualties are often high.

Assad’s denial came in a rare interview with the BBC released on Tuesday, just a day after more than a dozen civilians were reportedly killed in airstrikes in a suburb of Damascus. 

“We have bombs, missiles and bullets. … There is [are] no barrel bombs, we don't have barrels,” he said in response to a question about their use, adding that allegations were a “childish story.”

Veryifying videos from Syria is notoriously difficult, but a wealth of evidence to the contrary, gathered by rights groups and activists on the ground, suggests otherwise.

The first recorded use of what appeared to be barrel bombs by Syrian government forces dates back to late August 2012, according to the BBC. 

Experts say barrel bombs are a "cheap and lethal" way of inflicting large-scale damage on urban areas. 

In February 2014, a UN resolution was passed ordering all parties in Syria to end the indiscriminate use of barrel bombs and other weapons in populated areas. A Human Rights Watch report released a few months later found that barrel bomb attacks had increased. 

“In the first 140 days since the resolution was passed, through July 14, 2014, Human Rights Watch identified over 650 new major impact strikes in Aleppo neighborhoods held by armed groups opposed to the government, an average of almost five a day,” the report said.

“A substantial majority of these sites have damage that is strongly consistent with the detonation of barrel bombs,” the report added. 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights — a London-based group that monitors events in Syria — documented more than 350 barrel bomb attacks by Assad’s forces in the first week of February. They made up over half of the 647 air raids across the country.

“The raids and barrel bombs have left death of 185 civilians, including 34 children and 29 women, while 800 others were wounded, some of them in critical situation,” the group said in a statement on February 6.

The group’s director, Rami Abdurrahman, says there has been a marked increase in the use of barrel bombs, and airstrikes in general, over the past three months.

The Syrian Civil Defense is often the first on the scene following such bombings, arriving to dig survivors from the rubble of destroyed buildings. In many areas, the group has taken the place of the emergency services in a country whose whole health system has been gutted.

“We would be very surprised if anyone believes him,” said Khalid, the group’s media liaison for Aleppo, of Assad’s interview. “We have documented countless massacres in Aleppo due to barrel bombs.”

The group says that during one week in February last year, 498 barrel bombs dropped on the city of Aleppo. In that week, at least 90 people were killed and 350 injured. 

“Most of the barrel bomb victims are civilians — women and children in their homes. And the reason for dropping them is to make civilians go away, to leave the area,” says Abdul Rahman, the Syrian Defense Force’s operational coordinator for Aleppo.

“Barrel bombs cannot be targeted accurately, they are just dropped from the aircraft," Abdul Rahman says, adding that the bombs hit “schools, hospitals and other public facilities.”

In response to Assad's remarks, the group and other Twitter users began using the hashtag #notbarrelbombs to share evidence of barrel bomb attacks and their aftermath.