At least 90 people were killed today in a rebel-held district of Syria’s city of Aleppo, as military helicopters dropped improvised barrel bombs on multiple neighborhoods.
As munitions have come into short supply, Syria’s military has turned to filling oil drums with explosives and rolling them out the back of helicopters. The bombs are every bit as inaccurate as they sound, and have a nasty tendency to careen far off course.
Rebel statements are claiming a majority of the victims of the attacks were civilians, and that’s not surprising given the high power and low accuracy of the bombs.
Humanitarian groups have been critical of the use of barrel bombs in densely populated neighborhoods, saying this may well amount to a war crime given how often they end in civilian casualties. It is just one of many potential war crimes in the ongoing civil war.
Bombing from planes was notoriously inaccurate until smart bombs were used. The poor man's alternative to the smart bomb is to hover a helicopter above a target with poor air defenses and drop dumb iron. More expensive than dropping from a plane but much more accurate. If the Syrian government was trying to kill civilians, they'd use the cheap option. What part of obvious don't super gullible pressmen understand? donthomson1@hotmail.com