UN, Red Cross appeal for halt to bombings in Syria and Libya

UNITED NATIONS, United States — The heads of the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross joined Wednesday to appeal for a halt to bombings of the cities of Idlib in Syria and Tripoli in Libya.

Both are “enduring untold suffering and destruction from a hail of bombs and shells,” UN chief Antonio Guterres and ICRC head Peter Maurer said in a statement.

They called on all parties in both conflicts to refrain from using wide-impact explosive weapons in populated areas.

“Parties to conflict should recognise that they cannot fight in populated areas in the way they would in open battlefields,” they said.

“International humanitarian law ... absolutely prohibits directing attacks against civilians or civilian objects, indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks, indiscriminate weapons, and using civilians as human shields,” they said.

The region around Idlib in Syria has been the focus of a four-month offensive by the Russian-backed regime in Damascus that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says has killed more than 970 civilians.

More than 400,000 Syrians have been displaced by violence in the region since the end of April, according to the United Nations.

Tripoli has been the epicenter since April of a bloody offensive by military strongman Khalifa Haftar against Libya’s UN-recognised Government of National Accord.

The World Health Organisation estimates that more than 1,000 people have been killed in the fighting, which has displaced some 120,000 people.