AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2016/17

itself Islamic State (IS) carried out direct
attacks against civilians in government-held
areas of the capital, Damascus, using suicide
bombers, and mounted attacks using
suspected chemical agents, conducted
sieges, and committed unlawful killings in
areas it controlled. Other armed groups
indiscriminately shelled areas controlled by
Syrian government or Kurdish forces, killing
and injuring civilians.
Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle
East, remained mired in armed conflict
between an array of Yemeni and foreign
military forces which continued to exhibit a
wanton disregard for the lives of civilians,
carrying out indiscriminate attacks using
bombs, artillery shells and other imprecise
weapons, and directly attacking civilians and
civilian structures or imperilling civilians by
firing weapons from residential areas.
The Huthi armed group and allied army
units loyal to Yemen’s former President Ali
Abdullah Saleh indiscriminately shelled areas
of Ta’iz city, killing and injuring civilians, and
blocked the entry of food and vital medical
supplies, causing a humanitarian emergency.
The Huthis also engaged in indiscriminate
cross-border shelling of civilian areas in
Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, a Saudi Arabia-led
military coalition of Arab state forces
dedicated to restoring Yemen’s internationally
recognized government conducted a
relentless campaign of air strikes on areas
controlled or contested by the Huthis and
their allies, killing and injuring thousands of
civilians. Many of the attacks were
indiscriminate or disproportionate; others
appeared to directly target civilians and
civilian objects, such as schools and market
places. Aerial bombing repeatedly struck
hospitals. Some coalition attacks amounted
to war crimes. The UN reported that more
than 2 million children in Yemen were acutely
malnourished, and 18.8 million people were
in need of humanitarian assistance or
protection at the end of the year.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of
civilians remained caught in the midst of
armed conflict in Iraq. Iraqi government
forces, mostly comprising Shi’a paramilitary
militias and Sunni tribal fighters, and Kurdish
Regional Government forces, backed by air
strikes and other military support from a USled
international coalition, recaptured Falluja
and other cities formerly controlled by IS. At
the end of the year, the parties were engaged
in an offensive aimed at driving IS forces
from Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. All
sides committed atrocities. Government
forces and allied paramilitary militias
committed war crimes and other violations of
international humanitarian law and human
rights law, mostly against members of the
Sunni Arab community, including
extrajudicial executions and other unlawful
killings, torture and deliberate destruction of
civilian homes. They subjected hundreds of
men and boys to enforced disappearance
and took no steps to clarify the fate and
whereabouts of thousands who remained
disappeared after being seized by
government forces and allied militias in
previous years.
In areas it controlled, IS continued to carry
out execution-style killings of local people
who opposed them or whom they suspected
of collaborating with government forces. IS
fighters punished individuals they accused of
failing to comply with their codes of dress
and behaviour, carried out abductions, used
torture and inflicted floggings and other cruel
punishments, subjected Yazidi women and
girls to sexual violence, including sexual
slavery, and indoctrinated and recruited boys,
including Yazidi captives, and used them in
fighting. As government forces advanced, IS
forces prevented civilians from fleeing conflict
areas, using them as human shields and
shooting those who sought to escape and
punishing their families. In other areas,
including the capital, Baghdad, IS carried out
suicide bombings and other deadly attacks
that were indiscriminate or deliberately
targeted civilians in crowded markets, Shi’a
religious shrines and other public spaces,
killing and injuring hundreds.
Elsewhere, Libya remained torn and
divided by armed conflict, five years after the
fall of former leader Colonel Mu’ammar al-
Gaddafi. The Presidential Council of the
Amnesty International Report 2016/17 49