Amnesty International on Tuesday slammed the Syrian government and rebel groups for terrorising civilians in the northwest city of Aleppo amid "widespread atrocities" which the rights group said amounted to war crimes.
Amnesty especially deplored the barrel bombs dropped from government helicopters, which it said had killed over 11,000 people in Syria since 2012 and 3,000 in the province of Aleppo last year alone.
“Widespread atrocities, in particular the vicious and unrelenting aerial bombardment of civilian neighbourhoods by government forces, have made life for civilians in Aleppo increasingly unbearable," said Philip Luther, director of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.
"These reprehensible and continual strikes on residential areas point to a policy of deliberately and systematically targeting civilians in attacks that constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Luther said.
Many traumatised civilians in Aleppo were living in "dire" conditions in search of food, medicine, water and electricity, eking out an underground existence to escape "relentless" airstrikes by government forces against opposition-held areas, Amnesty reported.
The barrel bombs - packed with explosives and metal fragments - have been dropped on schools, hospitals, mosques and crowded markets, causing carnage, according to doctors cited by Amnesty.
Many hospitals and schools have moved to basements or underground bunkers for protection, the group said.
Syria's authoritarian president Bashar al-Assad in a media interview in February categorically denied that barrel bombs had ever been used by his forces - claims denied by the United States and its allies.
Besides barrel bombs the report slated the use of other "imprecise weapons" also being used by armed opposition groups such as mortars and improvised rockets fitted with gas canisters that killed at least 600 civilians last year.
Amnesty's report documents three missile attacks by government forces including a devastating attack on a children’s art exhibition at Ain Jalut School in April 2014.
The report also charts widespread torture, arbitrary detention and abduction by both government forces and armed opposition groups.
Amnesty called for Syria to be referred to the International Criminal Court. All sides in the conflict should end deliberate attacks on civilian targets and allow "unhindered humanitarian access" for agencies delivering aid to Aleppo and across Syria, the group said.
Aleppo has been one of the cities at the centre of Syria's civil war since it began in early 2011 after a brutal crackdown on peaceful protests against Assad's rule.
“The fear and desperation among Aleppo’s civilians is clear. Many feel abandoned and have lost all hope for the future,” said Luther.
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