Aleppo civilians demonstrate to ‘limit’ regime barrel-bomb attacks

Syrians in rebel-controlled east Aleppo held a demonstration in a grassroots attempt to “limit” barrel bombs and other regime attacks against civilians, one of the organizers told Syria Direct on Thursday.

The goal of the “Rise Up For Those Who Remain” campaign “is to limit the massacres that the regime is committing against civilians, however until this point it has not resulted in any effective communication with human rights organizations,” said Firas Haritani, the campaign’s spokesperson.

Civilians raising posters with messages for rebels, Syrians in regime areas and human rights organizations in a picture posted to the campaign’s Facebook page on Wednesday.

“Victory Army, where are you?” asks one poster, while another reads: “The children of Aleppo, because we are free, Bashar’s barrel bombs kill us.”

The Facebook post was accompanied by the civilians’ specific messages to the world: for rebels to advance on their fronts and respond to the barrel bombings, for civilians in “occupied” regime areas to resist and reminding humanitarian organizations that children are present in areas the regime regularly barrel bombs.

The social media campaign, which began last month, features people holding up signs with the Arabic hashtag “rise up for those who remain.” The page has hundreds of pictures from rebel-controlled cities in Syria in addition to other posts from around the world.

The Violation Documentations Center recorded more than 2,576 civilian deaths from barrel bombs in Aleppo province between 2014 and 2015 alone, while President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly denied the military’s use of the indiscriminate weapons in interviews.

Photo courtesy of Rise Up for Those Who Remain.