Human Rights Watch released a report on Tuesday summarizing the Assad regime’s “hundreds of new, indiscriminate attacks over the past year with air-delivered munitions, including improvised weapons such as barrel bombs,…killing or injuring thousands of people.

HRW reviews attacks in Aleppo Province in northwest Syria and Daraa Province in the south through witness statements, satellite imagery analysis, and video and photographic evidence. It identified at least 450 distinct major damage sites in 10 towns and villages held by rebels in Daraa and more than 1,000 in Aleppo between February 22, 2014, and January 25, 2015.

HRW notes:

For a year, the [UN] Security Council has done nothing to stop Bashar al-Assad’s murderous air bombing campaign on rebel-held areas, which has terrorized, killed, and displaced civilians.

Amid talk of a possible temporary cessation of strikes on Aleppo, the question is whether Russia and China will finally allow the UN Security Council to impose sanctions to stop barrel bombs.

Two weeks, in an interview with the BBC, President Assad denied that the Syrian military uses barrel bombs: “I know about the army, they use bullets, missiles, and bombs. I haven’t heard of the army using barrels or, maybe, cooking pots [pressure cookers].”

See Syria Video Feature: Assad’s Deadly “Barrel Full of Lies”
Syria Daily, Feb 11: Assad Says “We Have No Barrel Bombs” as 100+ Are Killed By Airstrikes in Douma

The Security Council meets Thursday to discuss last year’s Resolution 2139, which demanded that all parties to the conflict in Syria end the indiscriminate use of barrel bombs and other weapons in populated areas.

HRW calls on the Council to “impose an arms embargo on Syria’s government and any groups implicated in widespread or systematic human rights abuses”.