Rebels said to kill captured soldiers
Source: Agencies |
November 3, 2012, Saturday
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A NEW video appears to show Syrian rebels killing a group of captured soldiers, drawing condemnations from human rights groups who warned yesterday that the gunmen may have committed a war crime.
An anti-regime activist organization said the killings took place near the northern town Saraqeb, which has been the scene in past weeks of heavy fighting between rebels and forces of President Bashar Assad's regime.
The video is dated Thursday, a day when the Observatory reported heavy attacks by rebels on regime checkpoints at Saraqeb.
The video shows rebels bearing and kicking a group of captured soldiers, some of them apparently wounded. The soldiers are not bound or blindfolded. The rebels then shoot them to death. The exact number of soldiers in the video is not clear, but appears to be around 10.
London-based Amnesty International called the video "shocking" and said it may depict a "potential war crime in progress."
A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said it was examining the video.
"The allegations are that these were soldiers who were no longer combatants and therefore, at this point, it looks very like a war crime. Another one," the spokesman, Rupert Colville, told reporters in Geneva.
"Unfortunately this could be the latest in a string of documented summary executions by opposition factions as well as by government forces," he said.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, asked how rebels can demand rights when they violate them.
An anti-regime activist organization said the killings took place near the northern town Saraqeb, which has been the scene in past weeks of heavy fighting between rebels and forces of President Bashar Assad's regime.
The video is dated Thursday, a day when the Observatory reported heavy attacks by rebels on regime checkpoints at Saraqeb.
The video shows rebels bearing and kicking a group of captured soldiers, some of them apparently wounded. The soldiers are not bound or blindfolded. The rebels then shoot them to death. The exact number of soldiers in the video is not clear, but appears to be around 10.
London-based Amnesty International called the video "shocking" and said it may depict a "potential war crime in progress."
A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said it was examining the video.
"The allegations are that these were soldiers who were no longer combatants and therefore, at this point, it looks very like a war crime. Another one," the spokesman, Rupert Colville, told reporters in Geneva.
"Unfortunately this could be the latest in a string of documented summary executions by opposition factions as well as by government forces," he said.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, asked how rebels can demand rights when they violate them.
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