Exclusive: Syrian forces deliberately shot elderly women as they tried to flee fighting near Aleppo
Footage seen by The Telegraph shows the Syrian army's 25th Division following the women to a house in western Aleppo and opening fire
Syrian government forces deliberately shot elderly civilians in the rebel-held north-west and sought out Turkish posts for attack in direct violation of a ceasefire deal, intercepted radio communications shared with The Telegraph reveal.
President Bashar al-Assad's regime is regularly accused of targeting non-combatants in the nine-year war, but there is rarely evidence to prove the attacks are premeditated.
The recordings reveal how soldiers from the Syrian army's 25th Division, a notorious elite special mission force known as the Tiger Forces, opened fire on what they identified to be a group of old women.
In the recordings, they track the women in a car that stops outside a house near Kafr Halab in western Aleppo on Feb 11. The women are seen collecting clothes and other belongings as they prepare to flee a regime advance.
It appears one of the soldiers expresses discomfort at shooting the unarmed women. "She looks elderly," one tells the others. "It’s clear she’s coming to pack her belongings, then she’s leaving."
Another replies: "I am watching them, they are about to enter a house. Yallah (Go)! I am firing now," before rapid machine-gun fire can be heard. "Fire, fire, I am observing for you," his officer says.
Local reports corresponding with the date and time of the radio communications indicate the women were killed in the attack.
Deliberate targeting of civilians is a war crime under international law.
The communications were intercepted after the army's radio frequency was discovered by spotters at a nearby observatory. They were then passed to The Telegraph by independent activist group Macro Media Centre (MMC).
Last month, this paper published leaked recordings from the same group, see below, revealing the presence of Iranian and Afghan militias fighting with slain Qassim Soleimani’s Quds Force alongside the regime in northern Syria.
Attacks on civilians have come to be part of the government’s strategy of terrorising local populations until they flee rebel-held areas, making them much easier to capture.
The regime has also been found to hit vital civilian structures, such as bakeries, schools and hospitals, which has the effect of breaking down societies and forcing them to surrender more quickly.
The Syrian government and its Russian allies have been responsible for over 90 per cent of civilian deaths since the start of the war in 2011, according to figures from the Syrian Network for Human Rights Network (SNHR). Some 70 to 75 per cent of them were victims of artillery or air-force shelling.
Nearly 300 civilians have been killed in attacks this year in north-west Syria, the United Nations said this week, with 93 per cent of the deaths caused by Syrian and Russian forces.
The UN stopped keeping a tally of the total number of dead in Syria when the number reached 400,000 in 2014. Using estimates provided by war monitors, the conflict has now claimed at least a million lives. Next month it enters its 10th year, with no end in sight.
Russia has blocked almost all attempts to investigate possible Syrian government war crimes at the UN Security Council, where it wields veto power.
Syria is also not signed up to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court, meaning it has not been possible to bring an international criminal case against Assad or his government.
“Throughout the war, the Syrian army and pro-regime militias repeatedly targeted civilians, including pregnant women, by sniper fire,” Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Fellow at Foreign Policy Research Institute and leading Syria expert, told The Telegraph. “Yet this is the first evidence I have seen of such wilful targeting from the regime.
“These war crimes and targeting of civilians - simple displaced persons seeking to collect their belongings - is one reason civilians are fleeing en masse away from regime forces, rather than remaining in their homes or attempting to cross into regime-controlled areas.”
A video widely circulated on social media this week, see below, illustrated the fears many Syrians have about what would happen to them if they stay behind in towns retaken by the Assad regime.
The video, reportedly filmed in a recently recaptured town in western Aleppo province, appears to show a government soldier abusing a civilian who remained in his home. The soldier forces the man to kiss his boot and repeat a popular regime slogan: "God, Syria, Bashar and nothing else."
Around 900,000 people - two thirds of them women and children - have fled their homes and many are now trapped without shelter between the closed Turkish border and advancing pro-government troops.
The recordings also reveal that Syrian forces have been deliberately attacking Turkish posts in Idlib.
Turkey set up 12 "observation points" as agreed under a de-escalation deal for the last remaining opposition stronghold of Idlib and adjacent western Aleppo, negotiated with Russia in 2018.
In its latest push into opposition territory, the Syrian military overran most of the points and fired on others, in violation of the deal.
"Send me the coordinates of the Turkish post, Somar," an artillery officer asks his comrade, addressing him by name. A signals officer replies: "It’s in front of you to the left, Sobhi. 07215313."
The coordinates relay a post manned by the Turkish military just a few miles from where the women were shot in Kafr Halab.
There was an attempted artillery attack by the regime on the position not long after the radio communications were made on Feb 12 and the Turks were forced to abandon it. No one was injured.
A day earlier, Turkish forces and jihadist fighters on the ground used recently supplied portable surface-to-air missiles known as MANPADS to bring down a Syrian air force helicopter, killing two pilots.
The battle for Idlib has seen Assad’s army and Turkish forces engage directly for the first time.
Concerned about the growing crisis, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president, has given the Syrian government and its Russian backers until the end of the month to halt their advance.
Ankara fears that if the humanitarian situation worsens, it will have to open its border to some of the one million Syrians recently displaced.
"Syrian regime forces hit Turkish observation posts on multiple occasions, so the likelihood of these strikes being accidental diminished by the day, but it's still jarring to hear it stated so clearly," said Ms Tsurkov.
Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said the attacks were a "wake-up call" to anyone in doubt about which side in Syria was behind the collapse of the ceasefire agreement for the northwest.
“Turkey will undoubtedly have been aware that the Syrian military was purposely targeting its posts, but for skeptics in the general public, this should be a wake up call about which actors are pushing escalation,” he said.
“It’s also a humiliation for Russia, who Ankara still views as a potentially trustworthy party to the (2018) Sochi agreement, which specifically mandated the establishment of Turkish military posts inside Idlib.”