Assad's forces turn highways into death paths east Syria

 
Activists northeast Syria reported that Bashar al-Assad’s forces have adopted new killing strategy by planting landmines near the main highway in Deir al-Zor.

Six passengers killed and seven wounded days ago due to landmine explosion hit their bus on the international road, activists said.

The Syrian army should cease its use of antipersonnel landmines and recognize that planting this internationally banned weapon will hurt Syrians for years to come, Human Rights Watch said in previous reports.

“It’s an act of revenge,” activists said, “the regime wants to cover its failure by planting explosives on roads that civilians pass by.”

An activist in Deir al-Zor, who only identified himself as Ramy, fearing for his safety, said: ”two days ago regime forces opened a machine gun 23 on Therdah mountain at “al-Akram” bus and martyred one civilian and wounded others, although this bus was coming from Damascus and passed all the security and military checkpoints, and the passengers were subjected to inspection and identities checking for more than 25 times during the trip, so why regime forces shot them when none of them was wanted for the regime.

Before liberating al-Hweqa and Deir ez-Zor suspension bridge, the residents of Deir al-Zor used to enter the liberated neighborhoods through al-Siyahseyah Bridge which recently has been called the bridge to death.

The bridge which extends 500 meters in front of the liberated political security building, was under the monitoring of at least 5 regime snipers, using sniping rifles equipped with 12.7 peculiar night vision, to target whoever crosses the bridge, and at least one of the passengers on each bus or a car passing over the bridge was injured in the process of passing the bridge.

Mohamed N, a cousin of two martyrs on the death bridge said, ” hundreds of people in the city have been martyred on this bridge and now the dilemma of Deir al-Zor’s people has ended partially by liberating this bridge, However, the risk of death by missiles still hangs over pedestrians, because regime’s heavy multiple rocket launcher which is centralized on the Panorama checkpoint south of the city , still targets the passing cars on the bridge with its missiles causing the death of a number of people and wounding more.

The regime is resorting to this direct targeting due to its inability to fully destroy the bridge despite bombarding it with explosive barrels more than once, and it’s reasonable for the regime to target pedestrians on checkpoints that are not under its control, but to target regime-held checkpoints is unjustified at all, activists said.

Although the cardiac hospital checkpoint in al-Jura is in a regime-held neighborhood, it witnesses occasional mortar shelling or is targeted with machine guns, and when people in this neighborhood cross the river by boats to the other bank which is a rebel-held area, regime forces start shooting those civilians. Translation by Dani Murad