Report: Russia Dropping Cluster Bombs over Civilian Areas in Syria

Russian bombers are dropping cluster munitions over Raqqa, Syria, the city known as the de facto capital of the Islamic State terror group, sources inside Syria confirmed to Breitbart News. Sources say Moscow is also indiscriminately targeting civilians neighborhoods populated by Sunni Muslims, killing innocent women and children in the process.

Russia remains loyal to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which has also indiscriminately targeted non-Alawite civilians throughout the country and is estimated to have killed far more Syrians than the Islamic State terror group. Forces loyal to Assad have slaughtered over 85 percent of the 250,000-plus Syrians killed during the war, according to estimates.

A source with Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a citizen journalism network that was created to document the atrocities of the Islamic State, told Breitbart News that Russia is targeting almost the entirety of Raqqa with cluster bombs, munitions that carry explosives which on impact, disperse hundreds of deadly metal fragments. When these submunitions deploy, they spread out over hundreds of yards of territory, creating a situation where individuals far away from the target site are subject to being killed or seriously injured. A single cluster bomb may hold hundreds of submunitions.

The citizen journalist network posted photos of the Russian strikes on its social media pages.

Yesterday, they reported that Russian planes killed several civilians in an airstrike that hit a school in Syria.

As Russia continues to take a more active role in propping up the Assad regime, Vladimir Putin’s forces have consistently “bombed residential neighborhoods,” the source said.

The Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently journalist told Breitbart News that Russia does not drop leaflets or take any other precautionary measure before launching air strikes into civilian neighborhoods.

Earlier in November, Moscow forces were accused of firing cluster bombs at a Syrian refugee camp, killing 50 people and wounding hundreds more.

The Pentagon has accused Russia of devoting much of its bombing raids to targeting opposition groups, instead of jihadi radical outfits such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

“Greater than 90% of the strikes that we’ve seen them take to date have not been against [Islamic State] or al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in October.