In April 2015, Eva Kor, who survived the Holocaust, publicly forgave ex-Auschwitz accountant Oskar Groening. This documentary tells their stories, and explores the impact of her forgiveness. January 27 is Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK, a time for us to remember the victims of the Nazis, as well as those who lost their lives in other genocides across the world.
Sorry folks, I have removed this video to make space on my server for new videos. We have a wide variety of films to watch in theVideosection.
But while we seem to be in agreement that it’s – vital that we never forget these atrocities– the question of forgiveness has proved much more controversial.
It (Documentary) looks at one of the last stories to emerge from the horrors of the Holocaust. Born in Romania in 1934, she lost almost all of her family in Auschwitz… she was subjected to horrific medical experiments at the hands of the notorious Doctor Mengeles. However, what really thrust the case into the headlines were the actions of Holocaust survivor Eva Kor, 81,who publicly forgave him and even embraced him in court.
For some people, that made her gesture of forgiveness all the more moving. Although it ultimately made no difference to the outcome of the trial – Groening was found guilty of being an accomplice to the mass murder of 400,000 Jews and sentenced to four years in prison – the image of their hug went viral.
She would later say: “I don’t forget what they have done to me. But I am not a poor person – I am a victorious woman who has been able to rise above the pain and forgive the Nazis.”
It (Documentary) hears from some the last Holocaust survivors living in Britain, who, like Eva, lost their families at Auschwitz. They talk about how they continue to be haunted by their experiences, and why for some of them, Eva’s actions felt like a betrayal of the memory of their loved ones.
There are no easy answers, but the film aims to explore a difficult issue, while also paying testament to survival against the odds and the persistence of humanity.
This video has been removed to make room for new videos.
Watch rare video interviews and news reports in our Documentaries section.
Following months of a merciless Saudi Arabia-led military campaign against its own land and people, Yemen stands at the very edge of an apocalyptic humanitarian crisis, an institutional and economic black hole, and an open wound on the map of Southern Arabia.
[Insert] The continued aggression of Saudi Arabia against civilians in Yemen and the use of cluster munitions in violation of the UN Convention highlight the relations among human rights, arms control, and conflict resolution through good-faith negotiations. After a very short humanitarian ceasefire and proposed negotiations in Geneva aborted, the geopolitical situation in and around Yemen is largely unchanged. June 8, 2015.(Photo/ credit:Citizens For Global Solutions).Exhausted by war and abandoned by those powers which claim to represent the so-called “free world” Yemen is cracking under the pressure of neo-imperialism, a lamb earmarked for slaughter on the pyre of Wahhabi Saudi Arabia – the designated hengemen of the United States of America in the Middle East.
Of Yemen’s 29 million people, over 20 million now require immediate humanitarian assistance. [In less than one year] Over one-million children have (been) registered by UNICEF as chronically malnourished, and millions have been left destitute by war.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing?
The United States of America has over the past decades become a grand master of deception – the promoter and instigator of abject violence in the name of neo-imperialism and its sister in arms, capitalism.
To better carve itself an empire and assert its hegemonic ambitions, the USA has exploited its regional alliances in the Middle East, calling on its vassal states: Saudi Arabia and the GCC countries to play by its rule and to its tune.
Whether directly or indirectly, Washington has had a hand in the demise of Yemen and its people, slowly engineering this poorest country’s sectarian remapping, while advocating democracy-building and the war on terror.
Just like in Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Libya, Yemen has been selected for socio-political and ethno-sectarian engineering.
Hussain Al Bukhaiti, a pro-Houthi activist.(Photo: CNN).
Hussain Al Bukhaiti, a pro-Houthi activist said, “With the help of Washington, Saudi Arabia is working to destroy Yemen’ social and religious fabric, systematically targeting Zaidi Muslims, all the while telling the world they want to help Yemen become more democratic. This is a lie! The US wants to control Yemen and it is using the Saudis to do destroy all resistance.”
While USA officials continue to school the international community on democracy and international law, advocating political self-determination and civil liberties as the foundations of modern civil states, Washington has sold Saudi Arabia billions of dollars worth of weapons, in the knowledge its bombs, warplanes and other weaponry would be indiscriminately used against civilian populations in Yemen.
Barry Tighe, Codepink. (Photo: CP).
Barry Tighe, activist with CODEPINK in Washington said, “Yemen is the Gaza Strip of the Arab Peninsula. It is inconceivable that the United States would help the largest violator of human rights to destroy the poor people of Yemen but it is also inconceivable that the United States would be arming and logistically helping and scientifically helping the regime in Tel Aviv to destroy the poor people of the Gaza Strip and to keep the people in the West Bank in such turmoil. I believe that the United States is responsible for what is going on right now, allowing Saudi Arabia to murder these people in Yemen.”
The USA has also turned a blind eye to Saudi Arabia’s humanitarian blocks on Yemen.
Putting 26 million souls at risk of starvation, disease and abject misery. In the face of international law, and in negation of all human rights conventions and treaties, USA has quietly condoned the massacre of an entire people, while watching from afar as schools, hospitals, residential areas and charitable organizations have burned under Saudi fire.
“International humanitarian law is clear that belligerents must take all possible steps to prevent or minimize civilian casualties. But the cases we have analyzed point to a pattern of attacks destroying civilian homes and resulting in scores of civilian deaths and injuries. There is no indication that the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition has done anything to prevent and redress such violations,” said Donatella Rovera, Senior Crisis Response Advisor at Amnesty International.
More troubling still the USA has provided Saudi Arabia with illegal weapons of war.
Signing off for the sale of cluster bombs and white phosphorus. By 2015, the Obama administration sold weapons to Saudi Arabia worth $46 billion. Some sources have estimated this figure to be closer to $60 billion.
Over 4000 civilians – mainly women and children have died in Yemen, killed by weapons made in the USA, tens of thousands have been injured, and hundred of thousands have been displaced.
Leah Bolger, US Navy veteran, and president of Veterans For Peace.(Photo: AFSC).
Leah Bolger, a US Navy veteran, and president of Veterans For Peace said, “It’s really been quite some time that the US has been violating international laws and committing war crimes and now Saudi Arabia is doing the same thing [in Yemen]. I’m afraid that because Saudi Arabia is a strong ally of the United States, it is not receiving the critical attention and response that it should receive and would receive if another nation committed the same kind of acts.”
But Yemen is fighting back!
For all the lead Saudi Arabia has rained on this impoverished nation, men and women have risen to oppose tyranny; determined to reclaim their lands and their traditions from the radical and reactionary ideology of Wahhabism.
As the Resistance movement, under the banner of the Houthis continues to bravely push back the Saudi-led coalition, forcing foreign mercenaries to retreat before their advances, civilians have organized their own movement – one which stands against engineered poverty.
(Top left is Fatik) Mona Relief is delivering lifesaving food, clothing, blankets and medicine to villages in Yemen. (Photo: monarelief.org)
Led in Yemen by Fatik Al Rodaini, the Mona Relief organization has run Saudi Arabia’s blockade, distributing humanitarian aid in those areas the kingdom purposely locked out in the name of sectarianism.
Several millions of Yemen’s poorest and most vulnerable have been profiled by Riyadh, condemned to starve and wither away for their faith does not meet Wahhabis’ religious seal of approval. Those are the stories mainstream media has refused to run as they paint a reality the public will unlikely tolerate.
Ostracized by imperial Saudi Arabia for they dared remain true to their traditions.
The Zaidis (Shia Muslims) of Yemen are fighting for more than just their land. They are fighting for their spiritual survival. No longer just another power-hungry colonial power, Saudi Arabia has become a genocidal monster, a force which intends to annihilate Shia Islam by systematically targeting its people, exploiting its political alliances, and immense wealth for cover.
Over the past months the Mona Relief organization, Yemen’s very own blockade runners have successfully distributed over 1.7 million meals to families across Yemen.
Despite the many threats of retaliations made against them, those dedicated activists have braved the odds, risking their lives to provide relief to those most vulnerable.
Yemen is indeed fighting many fronts, not least of all hunger and destitution.
At such a time when even the United Nations has bowed to Saudi Arabia in exchange for its financial largess – Yemenis face famine and death – all of which could be avoided if only the international community would care to abide by the rule of (International) law.
While UN agencies and other NGO’s give in to greed, there are still many of those which have not. Everyday men and women fight to give Yemen’s sons and daughters hope; relentless in their belief that before tyranny one should never bow – not without becoming that very evil they despise.
And so Yemen’s blockade runners will continue to defy Saudi Arabia’s embargo on their own people… and they will do this until poverty is defeated, and all Yemenis are given the opportunity of a better life.
Standing in the wreckage of his home, Jamal Abdel Wahid described how his 18-year-old wife, two months pregnant, was crushed by a concrete slab caved in by the bombing.The blood of Wahid’s dead wife and injured children was smeared on a nearby wall and basin. May 20, 2015. (Photo/ Credit: Vice News: Article).
“Children are terrified by noises. Finding food is a challenge. There’s rarely power. Many people in Yemen and beyond dream of an end to the fighting. As the civil war in Yemen continues, many families say they are living in constant fear.
“Parents say that their older children have been wetting their beds at night, and that younger ones are so traumatized that they are sent running for cover by the sound of a door slamming,” writes Hanna Ingber in her article titled ‘The Many Miseries Of Yemeni Families’, published in the New York Times.” [01]
People searched for survivors in the rubble of houses destroyed by an airstrike in Sana, Yemen. June 12, 2015.(Credit: M. Al-Sayaghi/ Reuters).
The article continues: “The fighting between Houthi rebels and Saudi-backed government forces has displaced a million people, destroyed cultural heritage sites and terrorized the population. The situation has worsened since a Saudi-led bombing campaign began in March, and a de facto blockade has caused shortages of food and fuel for many of the nation’s 26 million people.
“They described destruction to cities they love and their own homes, airstrikes shattering their windows and blowing out doors. Some have tried to make repairs. Others said the damage to their houses and the continuous fear of bombings had forced them to leave.
Empty shelves of a supermarket in the port city of Aden. June 10, 2015.(Credit: S. Al-Obeidi/ AFP/ Getty).
“Uprooted, Yemenis wrote that they had moved in with extended family members or friends. One man described how all the young cousins hide in the basement of their house. And even the safer areas, they wrote, still face shortages.
“Families have also been divided, with some members fleeing the country. Others have tried to flee, but have been stopped. A young woman said she and her husband had taken their baby boy and made two trips to the border. Once they were turned away by the Saudis, and once by the Houthis.
“Yemenis said they felt ignored, and they pleaded for those outside of the country to pay attention.”
Photos with sub-paragraphs added by Alistair Reign, and do not depict any of the individuals quoted in the following interviews.
Below is a condensed selection of the interviews originally published in The New York Times version.
Helmi al-Hamadi, 39, originally from Taiz in southern Yemen, has been living in Sana since 1997. He has three children, and his wife is seven months pregnant.
My 6-year-old daughter is the most affected person in the family. She can’t sleep, always alert to any sounds; even the sound of a door closing terrifies her. If a door slams, she thinks it’s an attack on us or an airstrike. She is losing weight. If anyone wants to go outside, if I have to go get groceries, she says: “I don’t want to lose you, father. I don’t want you to die.”
They have been out of school since March 26. When the airstrikes started, everything kind of stopped here. None of the residents of Sana can go to school.
My pregnant wife is in a bad condition, especially, because she is diabetic and at risk that we could run out of insulin at anytime. She can’t receive proper medical care.
My children wish that they could go back to school; my pregnant wife dreams of a peaceful night to sleep without one of our children screaming in their sleep every time there is an airstrike. I pray every day that when I go to the markets I can still find food for my family; this is decreasing on a daily basis.
The continued aggression of Saudi Arabia against civilians in Yemen and the use of cluster munitions in violation of the UN Convention highlight the relations among human rights, arms control, and conflict resolution through good-faith negotiations.After a very short humanitarian ceasefire and proposed negotiations in Geneva aborted, the geopolitical situation in and around Yemen is largely unchanged. June 8, 2015.(Photo/Credit: CGS: Article).
Arwa Naaman Saiid, 23, is a teacher and information technology student. Her family fled a rented house in Sana and moved to Taiz and then to the village of Moaser.
The children in our family are terrified even by the sound of thunder, thinking it is from airplanes coming to bomb them. Their fear and continued crying forced us to leave our house. We paid $50 per person to leave Sana. I sold my jewelry just to escape.
We have been affected materially, morally and psychologically because of airstrikes and earthshaking explosions that prevent us from sleeping.
We are six members in the same house, including my sick mother who broke her back more than two months ago. We couldn’t afford paying her treatment expenses. Now she’s home and can’t move. We have no food, no potable water, no electricity. We are denied the most basic rights.
We need to put an end to this flagrant aggression. We need the blockade to be lifted. Leave us alone! We are not associated with any political party. We are just Yemeni citizens. We need to be able to sleep, to eat and to drink what God bestowed upon us, without blockade and without killings.
Maali Jamil, 25, moved to Michigan as a young child before returning to Yemen as a teenager. She and her husband, who were both working as English teachers in Sana before the airstrikes began in March, have a 2-month-old son, Yusuf.
My husband and I let our apartment go because all the windows shattered in the Faj Attan bombing. And since we are now both unemployed, rent was too high, so we’re living with family. My 9-year-old cousin vomits when the explosions are too loud.
With the problems and everything, nobody is working. Everybody is at home. Who is going to pay for classes? It’s not important right now. People need to eat.
My father has heart disease and is very ill. Every few days, he needs to run some blood work so the doctor can adjust his dose. When there is no fuel, he cannot go. If there is fuel, but no power, the labs don’t operate. When he doesn’t get the blood work done, the doctor can’t adjust the dose, so my mom is usually at a loss and ends up guessing what he needs.
We tried to leave and were stranded at the Yemeni-Saudi border near Haradh twice, once for five days and once for two days.
The Yemeni people are barely breathing. My family and I are doing really well compared with most Yemenis.
My mom is from Aden, and the horror stories we hear are heartbreaking. One of my mother’s cousins says all they have to eat is cookies. Her children keep asking her when are they are going to have real food, and she just broke down and cried.
Hussam Alshami, 37, lives in Sana with his wife, their daughter and his extended family.
My 2-year-old daughter is oversensitive to any sound now, running to hug anyone in front of her when hearing even a door knock. Some other children in my family now urinate while sleeping.
Despite almost every glass in our house having broken, we stay and will stay. We have no other choice. We’ve been raised in Sana. We don’t know another place to live. And moving would cost money that’s not available at this time. But more than money, we love Sana very, very much!
We have only one hour of electricity every three to five days. On the other hand, airstrikes are horrible, indiscriminate. More painful is that the world keeps silent.
Feel our pain, because Saudi Arabia cannot do this to us unless you, the United States, allow it. The blockade must be lifted. Airstrikes must be stopped.
UNICEF estimates nearly 400 children have been killed and over 600 injured in the past four months in the country, the poorest in the Middle East. As well, 13 Yemeni teaching staff and four children were killed by a Saudi air strike on August 20, 2015. Two days before, coalition bombing in the Amran province took the lives of 17 civilians, injuring 20 more. UNICEF condemned what it called the “senseless bloodshed.” A Red Cross spokeswoman said the violence in Ta’iz, in southern Yemen, in just one day that left 80 people dead. August 2, 2015.(Credit: Counter Information: Article).
Tarad Abdul Aziz Ahmad al-Samawy lives in Sana in a house with 29 other people, including 15 children ages 2 to 10.
Our children are overwhelmed with fear when they hear airplanes. They cry continuously when they hear the sounds of antiaircraft guns. Sometimes we convince them that there is a wedding outside.
The war is choking us financially at the individual level and for all Yemenis. Our neighbors can’t find food. We offer them some from time to time. All of Yemen is living under siege.
Lift the Saudi sea blockade of Yemen because trade is the source of income for many Yemenis.
Around 300,000 people have been displaced by the conflict in Yemen and 12 million are short of food.(Photo: Reuters).At least 12 civilians have been killed in Yemen’s southern city of Taiz as Houthi fighters continued their offensive on the penultimate day of a fragile humanitarian ceasefire. Government officials said on Saturday that another 51 people were wounded after the rebels shelled several neighbourhoods in the city’s Hawd Al Shraf and Shamasi districts. May 16, 2015. (Credit: Al Jazeera: Article).
Rawan S. al-Aghbari, 22, was born in Yemen and raised in London. An explosion in Sana in mid-April badly injured her brother and destroyed their home. She returned to Yemen last month to help him get out of the country for treatment.
During the explosion he was inside the house trying to repair a window. The explosion ripped off the top half of the house, and parts of the window cut through his neck. There were shards everywhere; he was bleeding extensively. He basically flew from one side of the room to the other, and he had a concussion. He couldn’t form proper sentences. He wasn’t in good health, so we wanted to get him out.
At the time there was no electricity and barely any generators running for the hospitals. Generators need fuel, and there was practically none at that time. There were fuel lines that would extend for kilometers.
Yemen is suffering from a myriad of problems. At the front line are ordinary civilians, who are paying the price for this unforgiving war.
Hani Yahya lives in Sana with his extended family. He was working for an international democracy-building organization, but the fighting forced it to shut down. He is now unemployed.
We live in fear all the time. There is no electricity. No fuel. Food is becoming scarce, and prices are increasing.
I managed to get my wife and two children out to Egypt after the Faj Attan attack. But my nephews and nieces are still here, and all of them are affected.
They keep asking: “When will this end? Why do they want to kill us?” They are wetting their beds at night; they are depressed all the time and want to leave the country.
I speak to my daughter every day in Egypt. She wants to go back home. When she is in Egypt, she keeps asking, “When will this end?” They just don’t understanding why this is happening. We just tell them: “We pray it will end soon. We pray to God that it will be over.”
A Yemeni searches for survivors under the rubble of houses destroyedby an overnight Saudi air strike on a residential area in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a.May 1, 2015. (Photo: AFP/ M. HUWAIS).
Mahdy Abdul Hakeem Mahdy Saleh al-Mutairy is from the western coastal city of Al Hudaydah.
We are terrified and suffered the tragic loss of life of members of our family. My cousin was 23 years old when he died; he was a student. He was walking in the street when jets bombed the area. Dozens of bodies were found on that day.
We don’t have electricity because of the siege, but the hospital is still functioning and receiving patients, especially those suffering from dialysis, from other provinces. But I’m concerned that the only hospital here might close soon if this siege and blackout continue.
What we need is for the bombing to stop and the blockade to be lifted so that shipments of food, medicine and petrol products could be brought into the country.
A guard sits on the rubble of the house of Brigadier Fouad al-Emad, an army commander loyal to the Houthis, after air strikes destroyed it in Sanaa, Yemen. Warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition bombarded Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa overnight as the country’s warring factions prepared for talks expected to start in Geneva on Monday. June 15, 2015. (Photo: Reuters/Khaled Abdullah).Innocent men, women and children are bearing the brunt of bomb blasts and other explosions that have rocked Yemen throughout its ferocious war, as nearly nine out of ten casualties have been civilians, a new report by an international monitoring group shows. (Credit: Vocativ: Article).
Fuad Shaif Ali al-Kadas runs a tour company in Sana. He lost thousands of dollars in plane tickets after a tourist group canceled an April trip. After the area near his home was bombed, he moved in with his extended family in another area of Sana.
Even if the war ends soon, and if tourists come back, I don’t know if we can refund this large sum. So my business is defunct. One brother works in the airport — he’s lost his job. Another brother works in an area constantly bombed by the Saudis — Faj Attan — and he now has lost his job. So while my family is alive and well, thank God, we, like most people, are struggling and out of work.
Imagine if this continues and we’ll have an entirely uneducated generation. Plus when the planes fly overhead, or children hear the airstrikes, they cry, and they can’t sleep at night. Now, if a father wants his kids to do something, he says, “Go or I’ll call the planes,” and they move right away.
Assaad Lutf Albarty and his family, who live in Sana, have been affected by the shortages of food, fuel and medicine. His father has not been able to secure his blood pressure medication or get the treatment he needs. He is hoping to travel to Jordan for heart surgery.
Many times we live without electricity for days or weeks. There is a lack of gasoline, which is used for transportation, and diesel, which is used to transport goods and operate factories. We have returned to the Stone Ages by using firewood and charcoal to cook at home. I’m not exaggerating — we’re doing this on a daily basis.
We can’t get water without electricity or diesel, and we can’t get the basic things such as flour and wheat, because of the inability to distribute them to consumers and our inability to go to distribution centers. Also because of the blockade, no merchants can import any new food, fuel or medicines.
Bakil Muttee Ghundol had been taking a course in teaching English in Aden, but he moved to Ibb, where his family lives, shortly before the airstrikes began.
Hundreds of displaced families from different cities come to Ibb because it’s considered a safe place as there are no airstrikes as there are in Aden, Sana or Taiz. But all the people here in Ibb are suffering as there is a huge lack of fuel, water and food. In addition, the electricity has been cut off for months. Only rich people have generators. Sometimes we go to their homes to charge our phones, our laptops.
My family is all safe, but some neighbors were killed in an airstrike. One was a close friend of my brother.
Noon prayers in the Yemeni capital have been rocked by a spate of deadly suicide bombings.At least 126 people have been killed, medical sources say, and scores more wounded at two mosques attended by primarily Shi’ite Houthi Muslims in Sana’a. March 20, 2015.(Photo: Reuters/ AFP. Credit: euronews: Article).
Hanan Ahmed al-Mansor, 23, attends Jinan University in China. Her immediate family is still in Sana, but her extended family managed to escape to Egypt.
Far from everything, I am still affected as badly as my family. I’ve had sleepless nights, nightmares, continuous anxiety and multiple visits to the doctor. My academic level has dropped, and every day, I am either crying or senseless.
My mother is my superhero. She has worked her way through a couple of failed businesses, but she finally was able to stand on her own two feet in her mid-50s and created a successful restaurant in Yemen. This restaurant was recently completely damaged after an airstrike hit a building in front of it. Our dream and our only way to eat and live with dignity was shattered. All I can think of now is, how am I going to finish university?
The children in my family sleep covering their ears. They only speak of how much they fear death, and one of them told his mom: “I want to die before you. I don’t want to see you die.” And, “In heaven, can I ask for a TV to watch you because I’m going to miss you?”
My cousin told me this about her kids. She was writing and crying at the same time. It’s very hard for me to keep in touch with my family since they usually only open the generator for emergencies, like to pump the water to the pipes. However, I buy calling cards to call them in emergencies, and if they have battery left, they respond.
I need to sleep knowing that I’ll wake up and my family is safe. I need Saudi Arabia to leave Yemen alone.
A United Nations team of war crimes investigators will not probe air strikes by foreign countries in Syria, its chairman said on Wednesday, despite concerns that some attacks by foreign militaries could have violated the laws of war.
The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria is not intended to investigate air strikes in Syria by foreign nations, Chairman Paulo Pinheiro said.
“It is not our mandate to investigate the behavior of powers involved in the crisis of Syria,” Pinheiro told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.
It would not probe potential cases of violations of international human rights law involving nations conducting military strikes in Syria, he said.
“There is no possibility that we will investigate the American air strikes or French or British or Russian,” he said.
The decision reflected a desire not to meddle into the affairs of powers outside Syria as well as limited means at the group’s disposal, Pinheiro added.
With the rapid expansion of territory controlled by the militant group Islamic State, nations including the United States, France, Britain and Russia have carried out air strikes on targets in Syria.
Some observers have cited instances that disproportionately hit civilians and civil infrastructure, and Pinheiro and his three co-commissioners have repeatedly cautioned powers to follow the laws of war.
Embodied in the Geneva Conventions, the rules require warring parties to distinguish between military and civilian targets, such as schools and hospitals, and carry out operations in a way that is proportional to the perceived threat.
U.S. officials said in November they did not dispute human rights activists’ allegations that Russian bombs and missiles have hit Syrian mosques, hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, killing hundreds of people.
Among these allegations, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a Nov. 20 report that air strikes by Russia left 403 civilians dead, including more than 160 women and children.
UNICEF condemned earlier this month air strikes that it said reportedly hit a water-treatment plant in the northern city of Aleppo.
It was unclear whether the attack had been conducted by domestic or foreign forces.
Watchdog Human Rights Watch said in an Oct. 25 report that at least two air strikes possibly carried out by Russia had killed 59 civilians in Homs.
The group, citing the possible use of weapons with indiscriminate impact such as vacuum bombs in populated areas, said the strikes could haveviolated the laws of war.
The U.N. commission was set up shortly after the start of the nearly five-year-old Syrian civil war, which has forced more than four million of refugees to flee the country and killed some 250,000 people.
Its mission is “to investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law since March 2011 in the Syrian Arab Republic,” according to the website of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
An airstrike carried out by the Saudi-led coalition has hit a clinic in southern Yemen run by MSF, wounding nine people, including two MSF staff. According to local sources, at 11.20 on 2 December, three airstrikes targeted a park in Taiz city’s Al Houban district, 2 km from MSF’s clinic.
MSF clinic under attack
Child was injured in the attack.
The MSF team immediately evacuated the clinic and informed the Saudi-led coalition that their jet planes were mounting an attack nearby.
The clinic itself came under attack. The wounded, two of them with critical injuries, were transferred to Al Qaidah and Al Resalah hospitals. MSF supports both hospitals in treating war-wounded patients.
“I was in MSF’s mother and child hospital in Taiz, just 1 km away from Al Houban clinic, when we heard the airstrikes,” says Nora Echaibi, MSF’s medical team leader in Taiz.
Everyone was scared. We evacuated the teams as soon as possible
MSF’s team in Taiz is currently supporting Yemeni medical staff in providing emergency treatment to people wounded in the airstrikes.
At MSF’s tented clinic in Al Houban, staff provided urgent medical care to people displaced from their homes by the recent conflict. The Saudi-led coalition had been informed about the precise location and the activities carried out by MSF in Al Houban.
Violation of international humanitarian law
“The health structures GPS coordinates were regularly shared with the Saudi-led coalition, most recently on 29 November, when we informed them about this specific activity in Al Houban,” says Jerome Alin, MSF’s head of mission in Yemen.
“There is no way that the Saudi-led coalition could have been unaware of the presence of MSF activities in this location.”
MSF has been providing those hospitals in Taiz that are still functioning with emergency medications, surgical supplies and practical support since May 2015. An MSF team has been providing urgent medical care at its clinic in Al Houban for the past two months.
In the past two days, the team treated 480 patients in Al Houban.
“The bombing of civilians and hospitals is a violation of international humanitarian law,” says Alin. “Civilians seeking healthcare and medical facilities must be respected.” Alin added ”An MSF supported hospital was as well hit by airstrikes in Haydan District in Saada Province and completely destroyed last month.”
A double-tap barrel bombing on Saturday 28 November on a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)-supported hospital in a besieged zone in northern Homs governorate, Syria, has caused seven deaths, the partial destruction of the hospital and an influx of 47 wounded patients needing to be transferred to nearby field hospitals, some of whom died en route.
At around 9:40 am local time on Saturday 28 November, a barrel bomb was dropped from a helicopter on a populated area of Al Zafarana town, to the north east of Homs city in Syria, killing a man and a young girl, and wounding 16 people.
These patients were admitted to the Al Zafarana hospital in the mass casualty influx.
Hospital Double-Tapped Barrel Bombed
Soon after, another barrel bomb landed next to the hospital, causing damage to the kidney dialysis unit.
Then 40 minutes later, at around 10:30 am local time, when the wounded from the first bomb were being treated in the hospital, two further barrel bombs were dropped right by the front entrance, killing one bystander, and wounding 31 of the patients under treatment and medical staff, including two paramedics working for the Syrian Civil Defense ambulance service, one of whom sustained critically serious head injuries.
The second blast also caused partial destruction of the hospital.
The most critically wounded patients were transferred to three nearby hospitals. The 16 from the initial influx were immediately sent to one hospital. A second facility received 21 injured and four who arrived dead, having died on the journey, and the third facility received 10 injured and one dead-on-arrival.
Calculated Destruction
In total these bombings have killed seven and wounded 47 people.
Half of the wounded – 23 out of 47 people – were children under 15-years-old and women.
“This bombing shows all the signs of a *double-tap, where one area is bombed and then a second bombing hits the paramedic response teams or the nearest hospital providing care,” says Brice de le Vingne, Director of Operations for MSF.
*A double-tap attack refers to an attack where one area is bombed, then either more bombing follows on the same area when the rescue teams arrive, or the nearest hospital is bombed when the wounded are transferred there for treatment.
“This double-tap tactic shows a level of calculated destruction that can scarcely be imagined.”
It is unclear at this stage whether the hospital will be able to resume activities after the bombing. Sections of the outside wall have been blown in by the blast and the dialysis unit and part of the medical stock have been destroyed.
MSF Supports Continued Operations
MSF is offering support to repair or relocate the facility, and is preparing to send the hospital team essential medical supplies should it be possible for them to continue operating.
“This makeshift hospital was providing a lifeline of care to around 40,000 people in Al Zafarana town and the surroundings,” says de le Vingne.
“It is already a tragedy that seven people – including a small girl – have been killed, but if the hospital has to close down or reduce activities, that is a double tragedy for the people living under the permanent threat of war, with nowhere else to turn for medical assistance.”
MSF once again reiterates its call that all efforts should be taken by all parties to the Syrian war to avoid civilians and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and ambulances.
The multiplication of these atrocious attacks, with overwhelmingly high numbers of civilians, including women, children and medical staff, wounded or killed, must cease.
MSF/Doctors Without Borders In Syria
MSF operates six medical facilities in the north of Syria and directly supports more than 150 health posts and field hospitals throughout the country, with a particular focus on the besieged areas. These are mostly makeshift facilities with no MSF staff present, where MSF provides both material support and distance training support to help the Syrian medics cope with the extreme medical needs. This support network has been built up over the past four years.
The following is a list compiled by Ishaan Tharoor, referencing a report by Kevin Sieff – ‘South Sudan thought it solved its child soldier problem. It hasn’t, appeared in The Washington Post.
Burma
A 15-year-old rebel soldier of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army inserts bullets into the clip of his rifle near a military base in the Kokang region on March 11. (Reuters)
In recent years, Burma, also known as Myanmar, has undergone important political reforms and staged elections this week that appeared to show the victory of the country’s main opposition, pro-democracy party. But its many years of repressive military rule have left a toxic legacy: the presence of child soldiers in the ranks of both the national army as well as a constellation of ethnic militias in various parts of the country. Hundreds have been freed in the past decade in the wake of international pressure.
Nigeria
A screengrab from a video released by the Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram shows the leader of the group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, on Oct. 2, 2014. (AFP/Getty Images)
The Islamist militant group Boko Haram has abducted children into its ranks, and forced some to bear arms.
Yemen
Smoke rises above buildings following airstrikes allegedly carried out by the Saudi-led coalition targeting Houthi positions in Sanaa, Yemen, on July 14.(Yahya Arhab/EPA)
The Arab world’s most impoverished nation has devolved into a patchwork of rival militias, whose battles have been further complicated by the intervention of Arab neighbors like Saudi Arabia. As my colleague Hugh Naylor reported earlier this year, amid political chaos and humanitarian calamity, “hundreds and possibly thousands of boys are fighting in Yemen’s conflict.”
Democratic Republic of Congo
A Democratic Republic of Congo army soldier patrols in the Nakabumbi area of Kimbumba, near the border with Rwanda, on June 14, 2014. (Junior D. Kannah/AFP/Getty Images)
The succession of armed conflicts to torment the Democratic Republic of Congo include myriad cases of child soldiers being drafted into the ranks of both government forces and a constellation of rebel groups.
South Sudan
Young boys, child soldiers, sit with their rifles at a disarmament ceremony in Pibor overseen by UNICEF and partners on Feb. 10. (Charles Lomodong/AFP/Getty Images)
As Sieff reports, some 16,000 children have been recruited by both government and rebel forces since hostilities flared in late 2013. “They are foot soldiers and cooks and cleaners, boys and girls as young as 9. Many were taken from their homes and schools and forced onto the battlefield,” Sieff writes.
Syria
Young boys known as the lion cubs hold rifles and Islamic State group flags as they exercise at a training camp in a photo released on April 25. (Militant Web site via AP)
Syria’s miserable disintegration — the country is now in the fifth year of a grinding civil war — has displaced half the Syrian population and led to a hodgepodge of militant factions carving out fiefdoms within the unraveling state. The jihadist Islamic State has released propaganda videos and photos of its young recruits, including hideous images of children as parties to hideous slaughters. They are not alone, though: a recent Human Rights Watch report accused Syrian Kurdish factions, erstwhile allies of the United States, of also sending children to war.
Somalia
Security forces stand by the wreckage of a car after it was bombed in the Wardhigley District south of Mogadishu on Feb. 27. (Mohamed Abdiwahab/AFP/Getty Images
War-torn Somalia has endured decades of conflict and currently is still in the midst of a long-running battle pitting government and African Union forces against al-Shabab, an Islamist group with ties to al-Qaeda. Both the extremist group and the government have been accused by the U.N. of recruiting child soldiers. Last year, the U.N.’s top envoy for children and armed conflict found that former child soldiers rescued from al-Shabab were being “punished” in camps intended for their rehabilitation.
Sudan
A boy watches as a military convoy of government forces accompanying Yasir Ahmed Mohamed, special prosecutor for crimes in Darfur, and arrives in Tabit village in Sudan’s North Darfur region on Nov. 20, 2014.(Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters)
In Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region, there are myriad reports and eyewitness accounts of child soldiers participating in alleged war crimes and massacres of civilians.
Activist Tighe Barry from Code Pink. (Photo: via buzznet)
Press TV has interviewed Tighe Barry, an activist with CODEPINK in Washington, to discuss the statements by Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, saying it has not yet found any evidence that US fighter jets attacked one of its hospitals in Afghanistan’s embattled city of Kunduz by mistake and that the raid seems to have had no purpose but to “kill and destroy.“
Following is a rough transcription of the interview:
Press TV: This is the one story that seems not be going away for the US, the details only seem to get worse. What kind of pressure do you think this puts on the US for accountability?
Barry: Well without a doubt this puts a lot of pressure on the [US President Barack] Obama administration as far as external foreign affairs is considered. But the fact is that these war crimes have been going on since 2001 and they will continue.
Now the United States is putting boots on the ground in Syria and they are not leaving Afghanistan. The record shows that the United States has committed war crime after war crime. They support war criminals in Israel, in Saudi Arabia and they are implicit in the blood and deaths of many, many people around this globe. Until and unless the world stands up and the people in United States stand up and tell the United States that it can no longer permit the human rights violations; the mass murder that it is committing and allow free and independent panels to investigate these things, all these war crimes will be investigated by the perpetrators.
Photo-Bombing for Peace. Code Pink activist Tighe Barry disrupts the beginning of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in Washington, Sept. 3, 2013.
Press TV: And Doctor Without Borders has not backed down since day one and I am wondering is it almost becoming an example for others who as you correctly said many such cases have happened which do go unreported of course, do you think it will be becoming an example for others to then take up their claims as well?
Barry: Well we certainly hope so and a prestigious organization such as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Doctor Without Borders, should have the backing of International Red Cross, the Red Crescent, it should be talked about in the halls of the UN, the European Union, European Parliament. The country of France should stand up as the host of this organization and say no more and ‘we are going to investigate’. We see the investigations that go on and on and on that never produce any results other than ‘oops, we are sorry‘.
And I hope that in my country …, we are every single day …, for example I am leaving for Lebanon this evening to witness the catastrophe that is taking place in that country with the Syrian refugees pouring over the border due to the complicity of the United States in bombing that country and it is time for the United States to pull back and realize that it is not the world policeman.
To view this video report by Press TV correspondent, click on the link below.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during an event at the Center for American Progress November 10, 2015 in Washington, DC., AFP (Photo: Brendan Smialowski)
Israel has suspended upcoming meetings with the European Union in retaliation for it issuing guidelines calling on all produce originating from Israeli settlements to be clearly labeled.
“Because of the latest EU decision, Israel is suspending its diplomatic dialogue with the EU in various forums which had been scheduled to take place in the coming weeks,” Israel’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday.
Shortly before the announcement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared the European Union’s decision to label goods from Israeli settlements to the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses.
“The labeling of products of the Jewish state by the European Union brings back dark memories. Europe should be ashamed of itself,” he said in an English-language video clip posted on Facebook. [Video below]
“It (the EU) took an immoral decision […] this will not advance peace, it will certainly not advance truth and justice. It’s wrong.”
Netanyahu drew the same comparison in September when he said that Israelis “remember history and we remember what happened when the products of Jews were labelled in Europe“.
After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, they imposed an economic boycott against the country’s Jews, issuing orders and posting signs telling the public not to buy from them.
The EU Commission “interpretative notice” ruling released earlier in the day set guidelines for labeling products from Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories and annexed east Jerusalem as well as the Golan Heights, all occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.
The produce should now read “made in an Israeli settlement” or equivalent in order to be sold in the EU. Products from the West Bank meanwhile, which do not come from settlements, should be labelled as “product from Palestine” or equivalent.
The settlements are deemed illegal under international law and are considered a major stumbling block to peace efforts since those in the West Bank and east Jerusalem are built on land Palestinians see as part of their future state.
“Of the hundreds of territorial conflicts around the world it chose to single out Israel and Israel alone,” Netanyahu said, adding that labeling would not hurt Israel’s economy but would hit jobs for Palestinian workers employed in the settlements.
Israel’s foreign ministry had earlier summoned the UN envoy to the country over the decision and called the step “discriminatory“.
On Tuesday, in anticipation of the move, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz called the labeling measure “disguised anti-Semitism“.
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, from the right-wing Jewish Home party and known for provocative statements, also called the move “anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish,” adding that “European hypocrisy and hate against Israel have surpassed all limits.”
However, Daniel Levy, programme director for ECFR’s MENA programme, said that the outrage was a political tactic.
“Israel knows that Europe and the entire world do not recognise the legality of the settlements and that all signed agreements between the EU and Israel do not recognise settlements as part of Israel,” he said in a statement.
“So Israel’s orchestrated display of outrage is really an attempt to intimidate the EU into not taking further measures in drawing the necessary legal distinction between Israel and the illegal aspects of its occupation. Europe should not accept unfounded and outrageous Israeli accusations drawing an analogy with the darkest periods of European and Jewish history.”
This article has been shortened, to continue reading click on the link below.
Thomson Reuters Foundation calls for global support for a full inquiry into the U.S. bombing of a charity-run hospital in Afghanistan have gone ignored, according to the head of Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) which is mourning the loss of 30 lives in the attack.
Joanne Liu, president of the charity also known as Doctors Without Borders, said the Oct 3, [2015] attack in Kunduz in which 13 MSF staff were among the dead could amount to a war crime with signs the hospital was deliberately bombed several times.
But Liu said appeals from MSF to about 76 governments asking for backing for an impartial investigation to clarify what went wrong and prevent any future such tragedy had failed to win support.
“The silence is embarrassing,” Liu told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview on Monday one month after the attack.
“We are … the outraged victim to a certain extent. It is normal that we want to understand.”
Hospitals are supposed to be protected under international humanitarian law – a set of rules which aim to limit the effects of armed conflict on civilians and the wounded.
The Kunduz attack happened in the early hours of Oct. 3 during a push by Afghan security forces with U.S. air support to retake the key northern city from Taliban fighters.
Liu said there were facts to suggest it was a war crime.
“They had our co-ordinates, they knew what MSF was doing, we had been there for four years. The only structure that was lit up in the middle of the night (that week) was our hospital,” Liu said, adding there was a clear MSF logo on the roof.
“All the parties had the co-ordinates … which were reaffirmed directly after the first strike. Despite that it continued.”
APOLOGY NOT ENOUGH
She dismissed any suggestion that it could have been a case of collateral damage as nothing else was targeted that night, or that the Taliban had been fighting from the compound.
The United States, which has apologised for the attack, is conducting an investigation, but MSF wants an independent humanitarian commission created under the Geneva Conventions in 1991 to be activated for the first time to handle the inquiry.
Switzerland, which provides a secretariat for the Berne-based International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, has initiated the process but it can only go ahead with the agreement of the U.S. and Afghan governments.
Liu said the attack had broader implications for the safeguarding of health care for civilians in conflict zones.
A week ago an MSF-run hospital in north Yemen was destroyed by a missile strike. Last year patients were shot in their beds at a hospital in South Sudan.
“We have seen an erosion over the years of international humanitarian law. Enough is enough. We cannot keep going like this,” Liu said.
Liu, who visited the Kunduz centre earlier this year, said it had been wrongly portrayed as “a little clinic in the bush” but was a specialised trauma centre serving a population of at least one million.
“I always called it a jewel of northeastern Afghanistan because it was a place where everyone felt safe, everybody knew they would get high (quality) care,” she added.
MSF has now closed the hospital, which had three operating theatres and treated more than 22,000 patients in 2014.
“For me the key message is about the safeguarding of the humanitarian medical space in war zones,” she said. “No one expects to be bombed when they are in a hospital. Every human being can understand that.”
Referring to high levels of violence in wars like Syria, Yemen and South Sudan, Liu said it was outrageous that attacks on civilian areas were now considered non-events.
“There is this numbness about violence in war zones today,” she said. “We do think that, yes, even wars have rules, and we do think it’s important to reaffirm some of those rules.”
About 200 members of the Yazidi religious community who were old and sick were released by ISIS militants last weekend. The freed prisoners report that girls and women continue to suffer from horrifying abuses at the hands of the militant group.
According to the Independent, 50,000 Yazidis fled to the Sinjar mountains in early August last year to escape from ISIS, which is bent on wiping out ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria.
Although a large number were able to flee, thousands were not so lucky. Men who were left behind and who were of fighting age were massacred, while girls and women were taken to be raped, sold as slaves, or forcibly married to their captors.
Hamshe, a former Yazidi sex slave who was able to escape from the jihadists with her baby boy, told the Daily Mail, “I can never forget when they separated men and women from each other. It was very painful to witness women and girls being taken as war spoils.
“Each IS fighter was holding the hand of a Yazidi girl and took her for himself. It was harder than facing death.”
Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Response Advisor who spoke to more than 40 former ISIS captives and said many of those who are being held as sexual slaves are aged 15 and younger.
Girls this age fetch a price of 150,000 dinars (about £85), according to a document issued by ISIS and obtained by Iraqi News.
The price list also shows that while women who are 40 to 50 years old cost 50,000 dinars (about £28), children who are aged 1 to 9 go for 200,000 dinars (about £113).
To escape from their harrowing existence, there are reports that girls are strangling each other or resorting to suicide.
One of the 300 women who were able to escape from the clutches of ISIS told Amnesty International how a 19-year-old girl named Jilan took her own life.
She said, “We were 21 girls in one room, two of them were very young, 10 to 12 years.
“One day we were given clothes that looked like dancing costumes and were told to bathe and wear these clothes.
“Jilan killed herself in the bathroom. She cut her wrists and hanged herself. She was very beautiful. I think she knew she was going to be taken away by a man and that is why she killed herself.”
According to Rovera, many of those who survived the sexual abuses of ISIS are still not getting the help they need.
“The Kurdistan Regional Government, UN and other humanitarian organisations who are providing medical and other support services to survivors of sexual violence must step up their efforts,” Rovera said.
“They must ensure they are swiftly and proactively reaching out to all those who may need them, and that women and girls are made aware of the support available to them.”
Killings, Torture in a Locked-Down City Under Siege. Systematic killings and torture by Syrian security forces in the city of Daraa since protests began there on March 18, 2011, strongly suggest that these qualify as crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.(June 1, 2011).
The 54-page report, “‘We’ve Never Seen Such Horror’: Crimes against Humanity in Daraa,” is based on more than 50 interviews with victims and witnesses to abuses.
The report focuses on violations in Daraa governorate, where some of the worst violence took place after protests seeking greater freedoms began in various parts of the country.
The specifics went largely unreported due to the information blockade imposed by the Syrian authorities. Victims and witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch described systematic killings, beatings, torture using electroshock devices, and detention of people seeking medical care.”
“For more than two months now, Syrian security forces have been killing and torturing their own people with complete impunity,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
“They need to stop – and if they don’t, it is the Security Council’s responsibility to make sure that the people responsible face justice.”
The Syrian government should take immediate steps to halt the excessive use of lethal force by security forces, Human Rights Watch said. The United Nations Security Council should impose sanctions and press Syria for accountability and, if it doesn’t respond adequately, refer Syria to the International Criminal Court.
The protests first broke out in Daraa in response to the detention and torture of 15 children accused of painting graffiti slogans calling for the government’s downfall. In response and since then, security forces have repeatedly and systematically opened fire on overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrators.
Syria: Soldier holds little girl down with his foot and holds gun to her head.(Photo: @free_media_hub)
The security forces have killed at least 418 peoplein the Daraa governorate alone, and more than 887 across Syria, according to local activists who have been maintaining a list of those killed. Exact numbers are impossible to verify.
Witnesses from Daraa interviewed by Human Rights Watch provided consistent accounts of security forces using lethal force against protesters and bystanders, in most cases without advance warning or any effort to disperse the protesters by nonviolent means. Members of various branches of the mukhabarat (security services) and numerous snipers positioned on rooftops deliberately targeted the protesters, and many of the victims had lethal head, neck, and chest wounds. Human Rights Watch documented a number of cases in which security forces participating in the operations against protesters in Daraa and other cities had received “shoot-to-kill” orders from their commanders.
Some of the deadliest incidents Human Rights Watch documented include:
An attack on al-Omari mosque, which served as a rallying point for protesters and a makeshift hospital for the wounded protesters, and attacks on ensuing protests from March 23 to 25, killing more than 30 protesters;
Attacks on demonstrators during two protests on April 8, resulting in at least 25 deaths;
Attacks during a protest and a funeral procession in the town of Izraa on April 22 and 23, resulting in at least 34 deaths;
Killings during the blockade of Daraa and neighboring villages beginning on April 25, and during an effort by residents of neighboring towns to break the siege on April 29, which left up to 200 dead.
Nine witnesses from the towns of Tafas, Tseel, and Sahem al-Golan described to Human Rights Watch one of these attacks which happened on April 29, when thousands or people from towns surrounding Daraa attempted to break the blockade on the city. Witnesses said that the security forces stopped the protesters who were trying to approach Daraa at a checkpoint near the Western entrance of Daraa city.
One of the witnesses from the town of Tseel who participated in the protest said:
“We stopped there, waiting for more people to arrive. We held olive branches, and posters saying we want to bring food and water to Daraa. We had canisters with water and food parcels with us. Eventually thousands of people gathered on the road – the crowd stretched for some six kilometers.”
“Then we started moving closer to the checkpoint. We shouted ‘peaceful, peaceful,’ and in response they opened fire. Security forces were everywhere, in the fields nearby, on a water tank behind the checkpoint, on the roof of a nearby factory, and in the trees, and the fire came from all sides. People started running, falling, trying to carry the wounded away. Nine people from Tseel were wounded there and one of them died.”
Another witness, from Tafas, said:
“There was no warning, no firing in the air. It was simply an ambush. There was gunfire from all sides, from automatic guns. Security forces were positioned in the fields along the road, and on the roofs of the buildings.
They were deliberately targeting people. Most injuries were in the head and chest. Two men from Tafas were killed there: 22-year-old Muhammad Aiman Baradan and 38-year-old Ziad Hreidin. Ziad stood next to me when a sniper bullet hit him in the head. He died on the spot.
Altogether, 62 people were killed and more than a hundred wounded, I assisted with their transportation to Tafas hospital.”
Syrian authorities repeatedly blamed the protesters in Daraa for initiating the violence and accused them of attacking security forces.
All of the testimony collected by Human Rights Watch indicates, however, that the protests were in most cases peaceful.
Syria: No child should ever see this kind of violence. A young boy looking at sidewalk where a bloodied corpse is wrapped in a sheet.(Photo: @free_media_hub)
Human Rights Watch documented several incidents in which, in response to the killings of protesters, Daraa residents resorted to violence, setting cars and buildings on fire, and killing members of the security forces. Human Rights Watch said that such incidents should be further investigated, but that they by no means justify the massive and systematic use of lethal force against the demonstrators.
Syrian authorities also routinely denied wounded protesters access to medical assistance by preventing ambulances from reaching the wounded, and on several occasions opening fire on medical personnel or rescuers who tried to carry the wounded away. Security forces took control of most of the hospitals in Daraa and detained the wounded who were brought in. As a result, many wounded people avoided the hospitals and were treated in makeshift hospitals with limited facilities.
In at least two cases documented by Human Rights Watch, people died because they were denied needed medical care.
Click on the link below to read the rest of this report.
Then 40 minutes later, at around 10:30 am local time, when the wounded from the first bomb were being treated in the hospital, two further barrel bombs were dropped right by the front entrance, killing one bystander, and wounding 31 of the patients under treatment and medical staff, including two paramedics working for the Syrian Civil Defense ambulance service, one of whom sustained critically serious head injuries.
In total these bombings have killed seven and wounded 47 people. 
Alistair Reign News Blog 