page_title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016)
section_title: Rebels
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016) / Allegations of war crimes / Rebels
caption_attribution_description: English: During the evacuation, rebel factions burnt buses meant to evacuate sick and elderly civilians from Aleppo.
context_page_description: The Battle of Aleppo was a major military confrontation in Aleppo, the largest city in Syria, between the Syrian opposition against the Syrian government, supported by Hezbollah, Shia militias and Russia, and against the Kurdish-majority People's Protection Units. The battle began on 19 July 2012 and was part of the ongoing Syrian Civil War. A stalemate that had been in place for four years finally ended in July 2016, when Syrian government troops closed the rebels' last supply line into Aleppo with the support of Russian airstrikes. In response, rebel forces launched unsuccessful counteroffensives in September and October that failed to break the siege; in November, government forces embarked on a decisive campaign that resulted in the recapture of all of Aleppo by December 2016. The Syrian government victory is widely seen as a turning point in Syria's civil war.
  The large-scale devastation of the battle and its importance led combatants to name it the "mother of battles" or "Syria's Stalingrad". The battle was marked by widespread violence against civilians, repeated targeting of hospitals and schools, and indiscriminate aerial strikes and shelling against civilian areas.
context_section_description: A UN envoy warned that rebels may have been committing war crimes due to their indiscriminate rocket warfare targeting civilians in Aleppo, while trying to lift the siege in October and November 2016. The Aleppo rebels used improvised artillery, including "hell cannons", makeshift mortar firing gas cylinders packed with explosives and shrapnel. UN High Commissioner For Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein stated that their use was "totally unacceptable" and constituted indiscriminate attacks as they were very difficult to aim correctly, frequently killing and maiming civilians in government-held areas. According to Zeid, their inaccuracy means they had no military purpose so he concluded their use was primarily to "terrorize the inhabitants of western Aleppo". The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported in December 2014 that between July and December 2014 the rebels killed 204 civilians using hell cannons. Professor of Law Mark A. Summers of Barry University School of Law, a legal expert previous assigned to the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, wrote that both the uses of barrel bombs and hell cannons is inaccurate and so randomly destructive that their use is illegal, and thus constitutes either the direct or indiscriminate targeting of civilians and civilian objects.
  There have been reports that rebels have on multiple occasions indiscriminately shelled the predominantly Kurdish Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood. In mid-June 2016 Russia accused the rebels of causing the death of over 40 civilians in the month. A spokesman for the US-supported SDF also accused the rebels of causing 1,000 civilian deaths and injuries, through shelling of Sheikh Maqsood. There were allegations that the Army of Islam group may have used chemical weapons in Sheikh Maqsood on 7 and 8 April 2016, based on reports of eight treated patients. In May 2016, Amnesty International's regional director suggested that the attacks on Sheikh Maqsood constitute war crimes.
  Rebel groups such as the al-Nusra Front, the Levant Front and the Ahrar al-Sham established Sharia law in areas they controlled, imposing torture or other ill-treatment as punishment. The al-Nusra Front maintained a prison at the "fetid, trash-strewn basement" of the Aleppo Eye Hospital where the group was headquartered. At this prison, some people were held for years and subjected to repeated torture. Human rights activists, lawyers and journalists have been subjected to kidnappings. In 2015, Amnesty International warned that "non-state armed groups have engaged in abductions and hostage-taking, as well as the arbitrary detention, torture, and other mistreatment of prisoners in Aleppo". According to a 2016 Amnesty International report, some of the rebel groups in the city engaged in summary executions, in some cases in public, on the basis of "quasi-judicial institutions". The victims were captured soldiers, government officials, rival group members, as well as civilians. Russian General Staff Lieutenant General Viktor Poznikhir claimed that the Syrian government discovered several prisons in East Aleppo on 15 December 2016 used by the opposition to detain, torture and in some cases murder their opponents, including civilians that refused to fight. At the conclusion of the battle, Syrian state media claimed the Army had found the bodies of 21 executed civilians in rebel prisons, citing the head of Aleppo's forensic unit. The Russian defence ministry also claimed the execution of dozens of people by the rebels, some showing signs of torture. The pro-opposition activist group the SOHR confirmed bodies had been found in the streets but could not verify how they were killed.
  Denial of water and sanitation is considered a war crime. Water supplies in the city for tens of thousands of people were deliberately cut by the Jabhat al-Nusra group for several days in May 2014. Jaish al-Islam also reportedly prohibited civilians from receiving food and supplies in one neighbourhood they controlled in December 2016. The rebel groups also horded
caption: JFS rebels burnt buses meant to evacuate sick and elderly civilians from two rebel-besieged villages concurrently to the Aleppo evacuations.
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