Introduction
INSIGHT organization recorded human rights violations against civilians in Syria in October of 2024, amid the continuity of the conflict, the absence of accountability and remedy, and the escalated shelling inside Syria, along with the broad conflict in the Middle East.
To prepare this report, Insight’s monitoring team consulted open sources, contacted field sources, activists and legal experts, collected data on individual violations, and consulted reports and appeals from other local organizations.
The process of gathering the data started from October 1st until November 1st, and the verification lasted additional days.
We believe that the number of victims is greater than the statistics revealed in this report.
Extrajudicial killings, injuries, and arrests perpetrated by parties to the conflict continue and threaten the victims to be subjected to torture and enforced disappearance.
The team also monitored ISIS activity.
Civilian Victims
364 Syrian civilians became victims of the conflict and violations in the country, amidst continuous indiscriminate attacks, the absence of accountability, and impunity. 103 were killed and 261 were injured.
Causes of Civilian Casualties
In October of 2024, clashes burst, aerial and artillery shelling increased, and the parties to the conflict conducted security and military operations and killed and assaulted Syrians. Also, ISIS attacked many parties, and Turkey, Israel, and Russia targeted Syrian areas from outside and inside which resulted in killing and injury of civilians.
Most civilian casualties occurred by the shelling, then direct targeting with weapons, and then war remnants.
The shelling by several parties, amid the deteriorating security conditions, caused violations against civilians all over Syria. At the top is Daraa, where there are many pro and anti government forces, then Raqqa which was attacked by ISIS, followed by Damascus and its countryside which was shelled intensively by Israel, then Idlib, which was shelled by Russia and government forces, and Hasakah shelled by Turkey.
The shelling by the Foreign Forces
In October of 2024, Russian forces, along with Government forces, shelled 29 sites in Hayat Tahrir al-Sham controlled areas with air strikes and artillery shelling, which resulted in killing 2 children and injuring 18 civilians (16 children and 2 women), and caused military casualties.
The targeted sites were 17 sites in Idlib, 6 in Latakia and 6 in Aleppo.
The ‘Global Coalition to fight ISIS’ shelled 27 sites of pro-Iranian and pro-government groups in Deir ez zor with air strikes, which caused the injury of 4 civilians (including one woman and one child), and military casualties.
Israeli army shelled 49 sites of pro-Iranian, government, and Hezbollah sites with air strikes. The strikes caused the killing of 19 civilians, including 7 women and 4 children, the injury of 29 men, and military casualty.
The targeted sites were as the following: 11 each in Damascus and Homs, 8 in Quneitera, 5 in Latakia, 4 each in Suwaida and Daraa, 3 each in Hama and Deir ez zor.
Also in this month, Turkey shelled 271 sites at least in north Syria using missiles and drones with 562 strikes, and resulted in killing 19 civilians, including 8 children and 2 women, injuring 53 civilians, including 16 children and 3 women, and military casualties.
ISIS
In October of 2024, ISIS carried out at least 20 attacks, of which 6 against civilians, and 4 attacks targeted oil transporting tanks.
The attacks were as the following: 13 in Deir ez-Zor, 5 in Homs, and 2 in Raqqa.
15 security operations were carried out against ISIS members and cells in October. The SDF conducted 10 operations, 5 of them were joint with the Global Coalition, in which 2 ISIS members were killed and 13 others were arrested.
U.S. forces launched 2 security operations, in which 70 persons accused of participating in ISIS armed activities were killed. Russian forces launched 3 operations against ISIS.
Arbitrary Detention
INSIGHT recorded the arbitrary detention of 102 civilians in October, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham perpetrated the highest rate of them.
HTS (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) arrested 42 civilians (23 men and 19 women), most of them were arrested during or after participating in anti-HTS protests, and some of them were Syrians who fled the war in Lebanon.
In regions under the control of the Turkey-backed “Syrian National Army”, 38 civilians were arrested, one of them is a woman. The charges were dealing with former Autonomous Administration in Afrin, objecting imposed loyalties, opposing Turkey’s policy in normalization with Syrian Government and dismantling some factions, and some people were arrested while entering Turkish territory illegally.
The SDF forces and Global Coalition arrested 13 men accused of belonging to ISIS.
Pro-Government forces arrested 9 civilians (8 men and 1 child) on various charges, including possessing foreign currencies.
Predominant incidents in October of 2024
- Israeli shelling on government-controlled areas escalated, including crossings with Lebanon. Russian and government forces launched violent attacks on Idlib, northwest Syria. The escalation of Turkish forces’ attacks by warplanes, drones and artillery weapons in north Syria was concentrated from October 23 and 26.
- The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arabic Republic warned that Syria is being pulled into the catastrophic conflict that is engulfing the region, and referred to the 300,000 Syrian refugees fleeing Israeli bombardments from Lebanon into Syria. Alongside more than 100,000 Lebanese.
- 175 Iraqi families left al-Hol camp in northeast Syria, which is the 18th batch since the start of coordination between the Iraqi government and Autonomous Administration, and the fourth since 2024.
- The Autonomous Administration handed over 1 woman and 1 child from ISIS families of Danish nationality to a Danish official delegation who visited the region.
- The “National Army” factions imposed exorbitant new royalties with the olive harvest season in Afrin, northwest Syria, including fees for each tree on the pretext of protecting it from theft, as well as royalties on original residents returning from places of displacement or from Lebanon to their homes and fields.
