Eight days of barrel bomb strikes across Aleppo Province have taken a heavy toll on civilian bystanders, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights putting the toll at 301 killed, including 87 children.
Exact figures are impossible to verify and several different factions offered different splits on civilians versus rebels killed in the barrel bombings, but the trend is clear, that the strikes killed massive numbers of non-combatants.
That’s unsurprising. Barrel bombs, a makeshift munition that amounts to an oil barrel filled with TNT and pushed out the back of a helicopter, are powerful but notoriously imprecise.
That’s a particular problem because the bombs have been used primarily in areas where the rebels are dug-in, and that often means highly populated districts where civilian deaths are inevitable.
