https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Hama_massacre
"brother of Hafiz al-Assad, who seized power in Syria in a 1971 coup, Rifaat was the head of the Defence Brigades. His elite forces allegedly
oversaw the massacre
of an estimated 20,000 people
in the town of Hama in 1982."
'Rifaat al-Assad’s crimes, particularly the 1982 Hama massacre, are among the gravest atrocities of our time,” said Philip Grant, the executive director of Trial International, which filed the criminal complaint against him in Switzerland.
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10:57 am Oregon time
Story is yanked from front page.
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'The Assad regime collapsed this month as rebel groups rose up and seized control of the capital, Damascus, after more than a decade of civil war.
Assad family members have been granted asylum in Moscow. It is unclear whether Rifaat, now 86, is among them.
His European wealth remains in limbo, with freezing orders imposed in the UK, Spain and France, meaning properties cannot be sold without permission from the authorities."
"An uncle of the recently ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used an adviser in Guernsey to secretly manage his wealth, which included a
vast European property empire worth
hundreds of millions of euros that prosecutors claim was acquired
with funds looted from the wartorn state.
Rifaat al-Assad, known as the “Butcher of Hama” for overseeing the violent suppression of a rebellion in the 1980s, has been accused of war crimes by Swiss prosecutors.
In 2020, he was convicted by a French court of embezzling Syrian state funds
and pouring the money into luxury properties, with the French state seizing assets worth €90m."
"The most serious insurrection of the Syrian Islamist uprising happened in Hama during February 1982, when Government forces, led by the president's brother, Rifaat al-Assad, quelled the revolt in Hama with very harsh means.
Tanks and artillery shelled the neighbourhoods
held by the insurgents indiscriminately, and government forces are alleged to have
executed thousands of prisoners and civilian residents
after subduing the revolt, which became known as the Hama massacre.
The story is suppressed and regarded as highly sensitive in Syria (and in Europe and Britain and Guernsey)
The Hama massacre led to the military term "Hama Rules" meaning
the complete large-scale destruction of a military objective or target."
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Oh, the event got its own euphemism.
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~1,000 killed
300-400 killed
~25,000[4]-40,000 civilians killed
~15,000-17,000 civilians disappeared
~100,000 civilians deported
The Hama massacre
(Arabic: مجزرة حماة) occurred in February 1982 when the Syrian Arab Army and the Defense Companies paramilitary force, under the orders of President Hafez al-Assad, besieged the town of Hama for 27 days in order to quell an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood against the Ba'athist government.
The campaign that had begun in 1976 by Sunni Muslim groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, was brutally crushed in an anti-Sunni massacre at Hama,
carried out by the Syrian Arab Army and
Alawite militias under the command of
Major General Rifaat al-Assad.
"Prior to the start of operations, Hafez al-Assad issued orders to
seal off Hama from the outside world;
effectively imposing a media blackout,
total shut down of communications,
electricity and food supplies to the city for months.
Initial diplomatic reports from Western countries stated that 1,000 were killed
Subsequent estimates vary, with the lower estimates reporting at least 10,000 deaths, while others put the number at 20,000 (Robert Fisk
or 40,000 (Syrian Human Rights Committee and SNHR).
"The massacre remains the "single deadliest act" of violence
perpetrated by an Arab state upon its own population
in the history of the Modern Middle East.'"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Hama_massacre
Nearly two-thirds of the city was destroyed in the Ba'athist military operation.
Robert Fisk, who was present at Hama during the events of the massacre, reported that
indiscriminate bombing had razed much of the city to the ground
and that the vast majority of the victims were civilians.
Patrick Seale, reporting in The Globe and Mail, described the operation as a
"two-week orgy of killing, destruction and looting"
which destroyed the city and killed a minimum of 25,000 inhabitants.
The attack has been described as a "genocidal massacre "which was motivated by sectarian animosities against the Sunni community of Hama."
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"Israel has been accused of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people by a number of experts, governments, United Nations agencies, and rights organisations including Amnesty International, during its invasion and bombing of the Gaza Strip in the ongoing Israel–Hamas war
Various observers, including the UN Special Committee to investigate Israeli practices and the United Nations Special Rapporteur, have cited statements by senior Israeli officials that may indicate an
"intent to destroy" (in whole or in part) Gaza's population,
a necessary condition for the legal threshold of genocide to be met.
A recent Middle East Scholar Barometer poll of 758 mostly US-based Middle East scholars[e] found that a majority believe Israel's actions in Gaza were intended to make it uninhabitable for Palestinians,
and 75% of them say Israel's actions in Gaza constitute either genocide or "major war crimes akin to genocide"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide
Deaths
At least 44,780 directly killed
More than 10,000 estimated under rubble
Indirect deaths[b][8] likely to be several times higher than those directly killed
Injured
At least 106,100
Victims
20% of population facing "catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity" involving "an extreme lack of food, starvation, and exhaustion"[12]
1,900,000+ internally displaced persons
"According to a 2 October 2024 letter[223] to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and others by 99 American healthcare workers who had served in Gaza since 7 October 2023, the most conservative estimate based on the available data was that
at least 62,413 people in Gaza had died from starvation
(based on starvation standards by the United States-funded Integrated Food Security Phase Classification),
most of them young children,"
"Applicable law does not require a minimum number of victims.
Neither the Genocide Convention nor ICJ jurisprudence requires a minimum number of victims to establish genocide."
As of 10 December 2024, over 46,000 people –
44,786 Palestinian and 1,706 Israeli
– have been reported killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 134–146 journalists and media workers, 120 academics, and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, including 179 employees of UNRWA.
"Nearly 70% of Gaza war dead verified by UN are women and children"
Xma$ for American Defense Companies
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Major General Rifaat al-Assad, the brother of President al-Assad, reportedly boasted of killing 38,000 people.
Reports by Syrian Human Rights Committee claimed "over 25,000"[48] or between 30,000 and 40,000 people were killed.
Twenty years later, Syrian journalist Subhi Hadidi, wrote that forces "under the command of General Ali Haydar, besieged the city for 27 days, bombarding it with heavy artillery and tank [fire], before invading it and
killing 30,000 or 40,000 of the city's citizens
– in addition to the 15,000 missing .
who have not been found to this day, and the 100,000 expelled."
A report published by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) on the 40th anniversary of the Hama massacre estimates that around
40,000 inhabitants were killed in the massacre; in addition to about 17,000 civilians who were disappeared and have
not been found as of the present day"
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