A Syrian rebel group has defended its decision to use prisoners as human shields against regime and Russian air strikes.
Video footage posted over the weekend showed dozens of people being transported in cages around the besieged Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta.
“Your women are our women,” a teenage boy standing near one of the cages is filmed as saying. “If you want to kill my mother, you will kill them too.”
Shaam News Network, a local opposition outlet, said local rebels had distributed 100 cages, each containing around seven people, to markets and other public spaces around the neighbourhood.
Hitting back at a hail of international criticism, the leader of one of the largest armed groups operating in Eastern Ghouta, Jaish al-Islam, claimed the cages were being used to halt the bombing.
“The cages in Ghouta are not human shields to protect combatants, but rather have been placed among civilians to protect them,” Mohammad Alloush posted on his Facebook account on Monday.
Calling the hostages a “powerful bargaining chip”, another Jaish al-Islam commander, Hamza al-Birqdar, told the specialist news website Syria Direct that the cages had forced a reduction in air strikes, a claim that could not immediately be verified.
Forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, have systematically targeted the rebel-held Damascus suburbs in what activists describe as a campaign to sow terror among civilian populations there.
It is feared that the caged hostages may have been drawn from the hundreds of civilians, mostly from the same Alawite sect as Assad, abducted by Jaish al-Islam and the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra in December 2013.
“Nothing can justify caging people and intentionally putting them in harm’s way, even if the purpose is to stop indiscriminate government attacks,” said Nadim Houry, Human Right Watch's deputy Middle East director, said on Monday.
“Ending Syria’s downward spiral requires international backers of armed groups as well as the government to make protecting civilians a top priority,” he said.
As Syria’s war grinds through its fifth year, the conditions for civilians living in rebel held territory is growing increasingly desperate. Much of the area is under siege by government forces, slowing the delivery of food, medicine and fuel and sending prices skyrocketing.
The death toll has surged following repeated regime attacks on the town of Douma. With burial space running thin, overwhelmed grave diggers have been forced to construct multi-tiered burial pits in order to hold the large numbers of dead.
Last week, at least 70 people were killed and more than 500 injured in an attack on the town’s crowded marketplace. Lasting for six hours, the bloodshed unfolded as Assad’s key allies, Iran and Russia, attended international talks aiming to end the war .
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