Activists have appealed to the US to provide radar to save civilian lives from the Assad regime’s bombing in Syria.
The Syria Campaign has posted a petition to Robert Malley of the White House’s National Security Council:
The US military has radar information that can warn Syrian civilians of incoming barrel bomb attacks. Make it available to rescue workers so they can sound their air-raid sirens and give families time to flee.
The Campaign notes that, despite a UN Security Council ban a year ago, barrel bombs have killed thousands of civilians — including almost 2,000 children — asserts:
Guess what the US military is doing with crucial information that could save countless lives in Syria? Absolutely nothing.
With advance warning, Syrian rescue workers can prepare the population for the assaults, according to Campaign director James Sadri: “If the international community is not yet prepared to stop the bombs with a ‘no-fly zone’ the least they can do is provide radar information to help civilians flee those barrels. If the US just picked up the phone to these rescue teams countless innocent lives could be saved.”
President Assad has denied that the Syrian military has barrel bombs, but last week Human Rights Watch released a report documenting hundreds of attacks in the northwest and south of the country.
See Syria Feature: Human Rights Watch — “100s of New, Indiscriminate Regime Air Attacks”
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
Khaled Khatib, a member of Aleppo’s civil defense unit, says:
If we could only get warning that the planes were coming, we could warn families, tell people to run from the markets, get the children out of the schools, let the medical centers know so that they can take cover.
Every airport in the world has this technology – it is common, it is civilian. Why can’t they share it with us?
