A 30-year-old Syrian citizen, named as Munif Ahmad Naddaf, died when the roof of his home in Sarja village in the southern suburbs of Idlib governorate collapsed on November 17, 2020. Local activists explained to SNHR that the roof had been severely damaged by intensive bombardment of the village by Syrian-Russian Alliance forces in previous military campaigns, including the dropping of barrel bombs weighing between 50 and 1,000 kilograms.
The Syrian-Russian alliance has committed further violations of international humanitarian law through the indiscriminate or deliberate bombardment of buildings, and has failed to distinguish between civilians and combatants which constitutes a war crime. We at SNRH have warned on several occasions that some residents have been forced to stay in severely damaged, structurally unsound and potentially dangerous homes without the funds required to carry out the massive repairs needed to make them safe to live in. We call on relief organizations, including United Nations institutions and donor countries, to pay more attention to projects to repair damaged homes while the Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies bear the primary responsibility for damaging these buildings, and must compensate residents for the damage resulting from indiscriminate bombing and for their human and material losses.
