A/HRC/27/60 include transport helicopters. Barrel bombs are highly imprecise, with an extensive impact zone. Flying at high altitudes further reduces their accuracy. The use of barrel bombs in that manner is indiscriminate. In areas where armed group fighters were present, Government forces treated clearly separate and distinct military objectives located in densely populated areas with high concentrations of civilians as a single military objective. Repeatedly, the incidental loss of lives was excessive to the direct military advantage that could have been anticipated to result from attacks on military objects. Such disproportionate attacks have had a paralysing effect on the population and had led to mass displacement. The use of barrel bombs in that context amounts to area bombardment, prohibited under international humanitarian law as a tactic that spreads terror among the civilian population. 103. When defending areas in which ground troops could not be deployed, Government forces used aerial bombardment to reinforce control around major positions and lines of communication to disrupt armed group advances. In Dayr az Zawr city, Ar Raqqah city, Idlib and in the Dara’a countryside, Government forces conducted airstrikes on oppositionheld localities and neighbourhoods between January and July in an indiscriminate manner. Government forces clearly and deliberately targeted civilians, residential neighbourhoods and areas with high concentration of internally displaced persons, resulting in extensive civilian deaths, scores of people maimed and hundreds of thousands displaced. 104. Where frontlines have stalled, the Government has employed a strategy of controlling the population, combining long-lasting sieges with continuous air and ground bombardment. In neighbourhoods around Damascus, including Yarmouk, Darayya, Babbila and Barzah, civilians were targeted on the basis of their perceived opposition to the Government. Merely living in or originating from those neighbourhoods led to targeting. The Government has carried out a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Aleppo to punish and terrorize civilians for supporting or hosting armed groups, in an apparent strategy to erode popular support for those groups. 2. Non-State armed groups Anti-Government armed groups 105. Anti-Government armed groups fire mortars, artillery guns and tanks towards government positions within residential areas, utilizing their limited firepower in an indiscriminate manner, causing civilian casualties. In April and May, anti-Government armed groups fired mortar shells and improvised gas-canister explosives at Al-Midan, Saif al-Dawla, Al-Sulimaniya neighbourhoods in western Aleppo, causing deaths and injuries. Between 17 and 20 April, over 50 civilians were killed in indiscriminate shelling. 106. Groups have intentionally targeted civilian localities either in retaliation for government operations or owing to those localities’ perceived support of the Government. Nubl and Zahra (Aleppo) continue to be shelled, with improvised explosives increasing casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure. Residents described being forced “to live in basements”. Jermana and Sayda Zeinab (Damascus) were indiscriminately shelled. AlMaliki, Sharq Tijara, Bab Tuma and Al-Shaghour neighbourhoods in Damascus city were shelled, with attacks often targeting children in schoolyards. 107. Jabhat al-Nusra and affiliated groups used suicide bombings and large-scale vehicleborne improvised explosive devices. Between 6 March and 24 June, Homs governorate, and in particular Homs city, was hit by multiple car bombings in government-controlled areas. Attacks which targeted civilians and resulted in four or more casualties are detailed in annex IV. On 24 June, a car bomb exploded on Beit al-Taweel street in Wadi al-Dahab neighbourhood, Homs city. It killed 2 civilians and injured 20 more. Such attacks, which have civilians as their primary target, demonstrate a clear intent to spread terror among the civilian population. 17