NEW YORK, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- Some 33 civilians, including 17 children, died late last month from ballistic missiles fired by the Syrian military, Human Rights Watch charged Monday.
In a statement, the organization headquartered in New York said the killings July 26 in Aleppo were the latest of 215 civilian deaths that resulted from nine ballistic missile attacks from February through July.
HRW said it visited seven of the nine attack sites and found no apparent military targets, but "significant" civilian damage.
Ole Solvang, HRW's senior emergencies researcher, condemned the attacks.
"You cannot distinguish between civilians and fighters when you fire ballistic missiles which have a wide-area effect into populated residential areas," he said.
HRW said the attacks "strongly suggest" ballistic missiles had been used based in the scale of destruction and witness accounts that no planes were in the sky at the time.
The organization noted it was difficult to draw conclusions about the legality of an attack without knowing the motivation or the information the military had at the time.
Using data compiled by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, HRW said the government had fired at least 131 long-range surface-to-surface missiles since December, with 20 of the attacks resulting in the deaths of about 260 civilians.
HRW said it had not been able to confirm the attacks reported by SNHR.
In February, a Syrian government spokesman denied using Scud missiles against opposition forces.
