Region

CAMP DAVID, Maryland — President Barack Obama sought to reassure Persian Gulf nations on Thursday that the United States is committed to their security, insisting a nuclear deal with Iran would not leave them more vulnerable.

Obama and leaders from the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries met in a rare summit at Camp David, the presidential retreat. They were expected to issue a statement announcing new military commitments, including joint exercises and ballistic missile cooperation.

"We're really looking at what we can do to expedite the provision of support and capacity building to the GCC," said Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser.

While the US has long provided military support to partners in the Gulf, the new commitments are expected to extend into cyber, maritime and border security.

Obama's separate negotiations to curb Iran's nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief has strained relations with many of America's traditional partners in the region. Gulf states fear that if Iran gets an influx of money when sanctions are lifted, what they see as Tehran's aggression in the region could grow.

As the leaders gathered, an Iranian naval patrol boat fired on a Singapore-flagged commercial ship in the Persian Gulf. A US official said it was an apparent attempt to disable the ship over a financial dispute involving damage to an Iranian oil platform.

The incident took place south of the island of Abu Musa just inside the Gulf, according to the US official, who was not authorised to discuss details by name. The White House said no Americans were involved in the incident.

Rhodes said that while the incident did not come up in Thursday's discussions, it was "exactly the type of challenge" the Gulf nations are focused on.

Obama rarely uses Camp David for personal or official business. White House aides hoped the more intimate setting would lead to a more candid conversation with the Arab allies.

Just two other heads of state — the emirs of Qatar and Kuwait — joined Obama. Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain all sent lower-level but still influential representatives.

The most notable absence was Saudi King Salman. On Sunday, Saudi Arabia announced that the king was skipping the summit, two days after the White House said he was coming.

Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman were representing Saudi Arabia instead.

The White House and Saudi officials insisted the king was not snubbing Obama. But there are indisputable signs of strain in the long relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia, driven not only by Obama's Iran overtures but also the rise of Daesh group militants and a lessening US dependency on Saudi oil.

The Gulf summit comes as the US and five other nations work to reach an agreement with Iran by the end of June. The White House says a nuclear accord could clear the way for more productive discussions with Iran about its reputed terror links.

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama on Wednesday went out of his way to praise two of Saudi Arabia's top leaders before meeting privately with them at the White House and played down the absence of King Salman, who pulled out of the visit last week.

"The United States and Saudi Arabia have an extraordinary friendship and relationship that dates back to [president] Franklin Roosevelt," Obama said at the start of the meeting with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in the Oval Office.

"We are continuing to build that relationship during a very challenging time," he said.

Obama said they would discuss how to build on a ceasefire in Yemen and work toward "an inclusive, legitimate government" in Saudi Arabia's impoverished neighbour, where Iran-supported Houthi rebels have been under attack by a Saudi-led coalition.

King Salman decided abruptly to skip the White House meeting and a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council at the president's Camp David retreat in Maryland outside Washington on Thursday.

The White House has sought to counter perceptions that his absence was a snub that would undermine efforts to reassure the region Washington remains committed to its security against Iran.

US officials have said the right leaders were attending the summit, which they portrayed as a working meeting rather than a symbolic get-together.

The Gulf Cooperation Council includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

The absence of many top Arab leaders, in addition to King Salman, is viewed as a reflection of frustration with Obama's pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran and a perceived US failure to support opposition fighters in Syria.

The president called Saudi Arabia a critical partner in the fight against Daesh militants.

Baghdad — Iraq said Wednesday that a strike by the US-led coalition targeted top Daesh leaders, including a man presented as the second-in-command, but the US military cast doubt on the claim.

"Based on accurate intelligence, an air strike was carried out by the international coalition targeting the number two in the Daesh terrorist organisation Abu Alaa Al Afari," the ministry of defence said in a statement.

Daesh is an Arabic acronym for the Daesh jihadist organisation, which took over swathes of Iraq last year.
It was not clear from the statement whether Afari was killed in the strike, which the ministry said targeted a gathering in the Martyrs' Mosque in Tal Afar's Al Ayadiya district.

Reacting to reports that Afari had been killed, the US Central Command overseeing the air war against Daesh, said it had "no information to corroborate these claims".

"However, we can confirm that coalition aircraft did not strike a mosque as some of the press reporting has alleged," it said in a statement.

The Iraqi defence statement did not say when the raid was conducted but came with a video of the alleged hit — grainy black and white aerial footage of a building being destroyed in an apparently scarcely populated area.

Afari's name emerged last month in reports claiming that Daesh head Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi was incapacitated in a coalition strike and handed over the helm of the organisation to Afari.

The Pentagon, however, had said at the time there was no reason to think Baghdadi had been wounded.

The structure of the organisation’s senior leadership is secretive and IS has only released video or audio recordings of Baghdadi or the group’s official spokesman Abu Mohammed Al Adnani.

The defence ministry Wednesday also said the strike targeted the top Daesh judge in the group’s self-proclaimed Jazira province, which includes Tal Afar, and “a large number” of the organisation’s members.

Tal Afar lies near the border with Syria, almost 400 kilometres  northwest of Baghdad, and was one of the first places Daesh fighters took over when they launched a surprise offensive on June 9 last year.

The US State Department last month put a $7 million bounty on information leading to Afari, who is presented on the Rewards for Justice website under the name of Abd Al Rahman Mustafa Al Qaduli.

The Hague — Investigators and lawyers said Wednesday that they have built war crimes cases against Syrian President Bashar Assad and key institutions of his regime with documents smuggled out of the country.

The Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) has already built three cases against the regime for crimes against humanity and is continuing to assemble evidence against others in the regime as well as in the opposition.

The CIJA said in an email that the cases, first reported by Britain's Guardian newspaper on Wednesday, were largely based on government documents smuggled out of Syria by a team of 50 investigators who had risked their lives to collect the evidence that now runs to around half a million pages.

The group is also building up possible war crimes cases against rebel groups fighting Assad, including extremist ones, and has hired staff to review hours of video evidence.

Britain's Foreign Office, which provides funding for the CIJA, called the group's work "vitally important".

"The Assad regime has committed thousands of atrocities against the Syrian people since the start of the conflict," it said in a statement.

"CIJA has worked tirelessly, often in dangerous circumstances, to collect documentary evidence to hold those responsible to account."

So far, the CIJA has compiled three cases against the regime based mostly on its bloody suppression of anti-government protests in 2011 that triggered the descent into civil war.

The first case centres on Assad and his war cabinet — the Central Crisis Management Cell (CCMC).

A second focuses on the National Security Bureau, which includes the intelligence and security chiefs.

The third involves the security committee responsible for Deir Ezzor and Raqqa provinces, and is based on smuggled documents detailing "how precise orders to crush the popular uprising flowed from Damascus to the governorates."

'Mania for documenting orders'

The Guardian said the regime bureaucracy's passion for paperwork had made it easy to document crimes and to determine who was giving the orders.

"The regime's mania for documenting orders as they travel down the chain of command — and after-actions reports that flow back upwards — has meant that the paper trail led unexpectedly to the very centre of power in Damascus," the paper wrote.

The documents provided insight into how the regime has organised itself during the war, revealing that the CCMC meets daily and minutes from the meeting are taken directly to Assad for review and notes that are then passed down the chain of command.

The material also showed that the country's ruling Baath Party structure has become a key "enforcer" across the country and that similar torture methods were being used in different provinces, "suggesting a centrally guided policy”.

Despite compiling detailed evidence and receiving funding from several Western governments, CIJA staff acknowledged that for now there is no court to prosecute the cases they have compiled.

Assad ally Russia has consistently blocked a UN referral of the conflict to the International Criminal Court, and any post-war legal reckoning could be years away.

Mark Kersten, a London-based international justice expert, said that an ad hoc tribunal to prosecute crimes committed in Syria, such as that which followed the wars in the former Yugoslavia, was likewise a long way off.

"When they're finally pinpointing people like Assad, you have this pseudo rehabilitation of him in the context of the conflict," Kersten told AFP in a telephone interview.

"Those states that would be absolutely indispensable to setting up an ad hoc tribunal or getting ICC jurisdiction in Syria via the UN Security Council have kind of changed their tone," he said.

"You now see an acknowledgement, even explicit, that Assad is a necessary evil in some kind of finalised peace solution."

UNITED NATIONS — Iran complained to the United Nations Security Council of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition’s forces hindering its attempts to send aid to Yemen as a standoff loomed on Wednesday over an Iranian cargo ship bound for the Arabian Peninsula under military escort.

Gulf Arab nations in the military coalition have since March 26 been bombing Houthi militia and allied army units that control much of Yemen as well as inspecting ships in a bid to stop weapons smuggling.

Iran said on Wednesday it would not allow coalition forces to inspect the humanitarian shipment, which is being escorted by Iranian warships. Saudi Arabia has accused Tehran of arming the Houthis, charges the Islamic Republic denies.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has tried by all means to alleviate the suffering of the affected Yemeni people; efforts that have mostly been thwarted by the coalition forces,” Iran’s UN Ambassador Gholamali Khoshroo wrote to the Security Council in a letter sent late on Tuesday and seen by Reuters.

“Indeed, the destruction of the transportation infrastructure of Yemen by the coalition forces has adversely impacted the delivery of humanitarian assistance,” he wrote.

A five-day truce that began on Tuesday to allow for the delivery of aid to Yemen appeared to be broadly holding. The United Nations says some 12 million people in the war-torn impoverished country need help.

The United States has urged Tehran to redirect its ship to Djibouti, from where the United Nations is coordinating aid distribution. Iran’s state news agency IRNA said the vessel left on Monday for a Yemeni port held by Houthis.

Khoshroo said that “those who violate international law, including international humanitarian law, should be held accountable for their acts and there should be no room for impunity”.

Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Muslim allies believe the Houthis are a proxy for the influence of their regional rival, Shiite Iran, in a power struggle that has helped exacerbate sectarian tensions across the Middle East.

In a statement on Tuesday, the UN Security Council called on all parties to respect the five-day humanitarian pause.

It “urged all parties to allow for the entry and delivery of essential relief items to the civilian population... and to facilitate the field activities of humanitarian agencies, in coordination with the government of Yemen”.

CAIRO — Unprecedented media criticism of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi suggests he may no longer enjoy unquestioning support from the diverse groups that helped him to stage an army takeover two years ago.

But diplomats and analysts say there is no immediate danger to Sisi's presidency, and he may even by the victim of his own success in crushing Islamism and stabilising the economy.

Egyptian newspapers have begun suggesting that Sisi is fallible. This would have been unthinkable when, as then army chief, he removed the Muslim Brotherhood from power in 2013.

The criticism is guarded and often indirect. For instance, Al Watan has identified factors undermining Sisi, including corruption and nepotism. It has also alleged violations committed by the police.

"There is probably no institutional reason for this limited push back in the Egyptian press. What it may show is yet more evidence that the power structures in Egypt are not as cohesive as everyone outside of the country seems to think," said HA Hellyer, a specialist in Arab affairs at the Brookings Centre for Middle East Policy in Washington and the Royal United Services Institute in London.

Sisi toppled Islamist President Mohamed Morsi after mass protests with the full backing of the generals, the "securocrats" of the intelligence services, top businessmen and most local media.

He went on to become president at least partly by rallying them behind a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, which he declared a terrorist group that threatened Egypt's existence.

But his success in neutralising the Brotherhood and reducing the number of attacks staged by militants based in the Sinai means his diverse supporters, no longer so worried by the Islamist challenge, are re-directing their attention to their own interests.

"This is less conspiracy, more normal bread-and-butter politics returning," said one Western diplomat. "[It's] a sign of Sisi's success in dialling down the economic and security crisis, but [also] a sign of his weakness so far in managing the other power centres — securocrats, judges, bureaucrats and businessmen."

Autocrat Hosni Mubarak managed Egypt's staggering political, economic and social problems for decades through his National Democratic Party until his overthrow in 2011. Sisi, however, has no all-powerful state entity to help him.

"Sisi's presidency is far more cohesive than any in the past four years — but not compared to Mubarak," said Hellyer.

Friction seen with businessmen

Businessmen who helped Mubarak to hold on to power for so long illustrate the complex problems Sisi faces. Some want him to accelerate reforms while others seek a return to Mubarak-era crony capitalism for personal gain.

Security sources blamed powerful businessmen with links to the media for this week's criticism. "The ongoing differences between Sisi and businessmen is the cause," said one, adding that the company bosses opposed what they see as Sisi's dependence on firms owned by the military and former intelligence officials for projects.

Sisi must tread cautiously. Some private sector companies want him to ease the military's control of what analysts say is a large percentage of the economy, action that could alienate powerful generals.

"Sisi's political-economic imperatives conflict with those of the military as well as the domestic security establishment, and the powerful quarters maybe pushing back on his need to engage in reforms," said Kamran Bokhari of the Stratfor global intelligence firm.

Local newspapers which once showered Sisi with praise have started complaining about the man whose grand ambitions span the eradication of militant Islam, and the turning of Egypt into an economic powerhouse.

The worst-case scenario for Sisi would be grumblings from the army, which has dominated Egypt for decades, or Gulf Arab states opposed to the Brotherhood which have poured billions of dollars into the country since Mursi's fall.

There is no sign that either has turned on Sisi or intends to. But the media coverage has nevertheless given rise to speculation that could make Sisi's job more difficult.

Sisi is undoubtedly under greater scrutiny than ever before. On Tuesday, he appeared cautious and far less confident than normal while delivering a pre-recorded speech to the nation.

"It is very important that you are certain that... I don't hide anything from you. I state all the challenges with complete clarity," said Sisi, adding that he sensed Egyptians had become uncomfortable with the progress of economic projects over the past few months.

Amr Adib, a television host with one of the biggest audiences in the Middle East, said Sisi was trying to reassure Egyptians in the speech that he was making sure various projects would succeed. "It is obvious that he is feeling concern. Concern about the talk of the people," said Adib.

Although Sisi has improved the economy after years of turbulence since Mubarak's overthrow, he has recently focused on foreign policy. He ordered air strikes in Libya after Islamic State beheaded 21 Egyptians there. Egypt is also helping Saudi Arabia to fight Iranian-allied Houthi rebels in Yemen.

These actions may boost Sisi's regional standing with powerful allies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but he is likely to face growing pressure to deliver on promises made by successive Egyptian leaders.

There are few tangible signs that billions of dollars in Gulf aid have trickled down to Egyptians who still long for better infrastructure, schools and jobs.

The next big test for Sisi is likely to come in the blistering summer months, when his government will face pressure to ease power cuts.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Hizbollah and Syria’s army made big advances against insurgents in mountains north of Damascus on Wednesday, Hizbollah and Syrian state media said, shoring up President Bashar Assad’s grip on the border zone.

The gains in the crucial Qalamoun region close to Lebanon against groups including the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front follow significant defeats for Assad elsewhere, notably in Syria’s northwest near the Turkish border.

Hizbollah, an Iranian-backed Shiite group with a powerful militia, has been a vital ally for Assad in the four-year-long conflict that has become a focal point for the struggle between Tehran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, which has backed the insurgency.

Hizbollah fighters and the army seized Talat Moussa, the highest peak in the area targeted in the offensive. Sources briefed on the situation said that move had effectively secured control of the entire area some 50km from Damascus.

“Now only the final stage of the operation left,” one of the sources said.

Syrian state TV credited the advance to the army and “the Lebanese resistance”, an unusual public acknowledgement of Hizbollah’s role in the battle for an area used by the insurgents to ferry supplies between Syria and Lebanon.

It also said that the army was pursuing the remnants of the insurgents in the town of Fleita.

Hizbollah has unleashed heavy firepower in the offensive, including concentrated rocket bombardments. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group that tracks the conflict, says this had forced many insurgents to withdraw.

The offensive had been expected for some time but was awaiting the end of winter and aimed to crush one of the risks facing Assad, who has lost much of the north and east in the war estimated by the United Nations to have killed 220,000 people.

The observatory put the death toll in the fighting at dozens on both sides. A source briefed on the situation said Hizbollah had lost four fighters.

Daesh clashes

Since March, forces backing Assad have relinquished wide areas of Idlib province in the northwest at the border with Turkey, another country that supports the insurgency. The president also lost the Nasib crossing with Jordan to rebels.

Daesh, the single most powerful insurgent group in Syria, has also been launching attacks on both government-held and rebel-controlled areas in central Syria, as it steps up efforts to expand beyond its strongholds.

Its fighters killed about 30 government troops in an attack on Syrian army-held areas in Homs province overnight, the observatory reported. At least 20 Daesh fighters were also killed in and around the town of Al Sukhna, some 300 km northeast of Damascus.

Later, Daesh said in a statement it had seized Al Sukhna in a move that gives it control over a strategic highway that links the province of Homs with north eastern Deir Al Zor province.

Syrian troops repelled the attack in places and were still fighting in others, a military source said.

An army statement said scores of “terrorists” were killed in raids in the eastern Homs countryside area without confirming the fall of the town.

General Martin Dempsey, the top US military officer, said last week he believed Assad’s “momentum has been slowed” and that, if he were in Assad’s position, he “would find the opportunity to look to the negotiating table”.

But expectations are low for a new effort towards peace diplomacy launched by the UN Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura.

Assad has received massive support from Russia and Iran. Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of Iran’s national security and foreign policy committee, met Assad on Wednesday and said Iran would maintain that support, Syrian state media reported.

“[Iran] will not spare any effort to help the Syrians and to strengthen their steadfastness until the achievement of victory over the terrorists,” the state news agency SANA quoted him as saying in the meeting.

CAIRO/ADEN — A five-day truce in Yemen appeared to be broadly holding on Wednesday, despite reports of air strikes overnight by Saudi-led forces and continued military activity by the Iranian-allied Houthi group.

Witnesses in the southwestern city of Abyan said warplanes had hit positions there after the Houthi seized the area following the start late on Tuesday of the ceasefire, which is intended to ward off a humanitarian catastrophe.

Residents of the southern provinces of Shabwa and Lahj, which have witnessed heavy ground clashes between local militiamen and the Houthis, also reported air strikes overnight.

Saudi Arabia and the Houthis traded accusations of ceasefire violations along the mountainous Yemeni-Saudi border, but residents said hostilities appeared to have largely died down.

An alliance of Gulf Arab nations has been bombing Houthi militia and allied army units that control much of Yemen since March 26 in what they say is an attempt to restore exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Muslim allies believe the Houthis are a proxy for the influence of their arch-rival, Shiite Iran, in a regional power struggle that has helped exacerbate sectarian tensions across the Middle East.

Aid agencies said the five-day break in fighting to allow fuel, medicine, food and aid workers to enter Yemen could be a “lifeline” for civilians trapped in conflict zones.

“There has been no break whatsoever in the fighting until now, and the people of Yemen need a respite,” said Sitara Jabeen, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the Middle East.

However, there was no immediate word of any new supplies reaching the impoverished nation, that has been beset by more than four years of political chaos and violence.

An Iranian-flagged ship that Tehran says is carrying humanitarian supplies for Yemen could reach the Port of Hodeida within four to five days, raising the prospect of a possible confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Saudi Arabia, seeking to prevent arms from reaching the Houthis, says it will not let any ships pass without authorisation. Iran says it won’t let Saudis search the vessel and has said its warships will escort the vessel.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Reyad Yassin Abdulla said in remarks broadcast on Al Jazeera television that Hadi’s government had not been approached by Iran to deliver supplies. He said Hadi’s administration had authorised the Saudi-led coalition to “deter whoever thinks he can violate [Yemeni decisions]”.

Death, destruction

In the bulwark of opposition to the Houthis in the southern city of Aden, the scale of over six weeks of near constant clashes and gunfire emerged.

Over 600 people had been killed and 3,000 had been wounded, while 22,000 residents had been displaced since the Houthis first pushed into the city on March 25, local watchdog group, the Aden Centre for Monitoring, said on Wednesday.

The United Nations believes 828 civilians, including 182 children, have been killed across Yemen since March 26.

Aden locals expressed doubts that the ceasefire would last.

“Aden needs a humanitarian truce so badly, given the lack of food, fuel and everything else. But we question the intentions of the Houthis and believe they will take advantage of the truce to take more areas,” said Hassan Al Jamal, a resident of Aden.

Residents said heavy clashes between local militiamen and Houthi fighters broke out in the early evening at Ras Amran, a suburb west of Aden.

Saudi state television quoted an official source at the Defence Ministry as saying projectiles had fallen on the Najran and Jizan areas on Wednesday morning and that some sniper fire by the Houthis had been detected. There were no casualties.

“The position adopted by the armed forces was to exercise restraint, abiding by the humanitarian truce approved by the coalition forces,” the television quoted the official as saying.

The Houthis Al Masirah television said at least two shells were fired from Saudi territory towards Yemen and some 150 rounds of automatic fire, but made no mention of any casualties.

The Saudi state news agency SPA said King Salman, at a royal court ceremony attended by President Hadi and Yemeni Prime Minister Khaled Bahah, authorised the laying of the foundation stone for a humanitarian relief centre.

The Saudi-owned Al Arabiya channel said the monarch had allocated one billion riyals ($265 million) to the Yemen relief work, in additional to a similar amount he had pledged earlier.

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican said Wednesday it was preparing to sign its first accord with Palestine, two years after officially recognising it as a state.

“The bilateral commission of the Holy See and the State of Palestine, which is working on a comprehensive agreement” on the life and activity of the Catholic Church in Palestine, is putting the final touches to the treaty, the Vatican said.

“The agreement will be submitted to the respective authorities for approval ahead of setting a debate in the near future for the signing.”

While it will be the first time the Roman Catholic Church signs a treaty with the State of Palestine, the Vatican has recognised the state since February 2013.

“The Holy See has identified the State of Palestine as such since the vote” by the UN general assembly to recognise it in November 2012, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told AFP.

“In its annual directory the Palestinian representative is referred to as the representative of the State of Palestine,” he said.

Israel immediately reacted with displeasure to the news.

“Israel heard with disappointment the decision of the Holy See to agree a final formulation of an agreement with the Palestinians including the use of the term ‘Palestinian State’,” an Israeli foreign ministry official said in an unsigned statement.

“Such a development does not further the peace process and distances the Palestinian leadership from returning to direct bilateral negotiations. Israel will study the agreement and consider its next step,” the official said.

The agreement, 15 years in the making, may be signed this weekend during a visit by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the Vatican for the canonisation of two new Palestinian saints.

It expresses the Vatican’s “hope for a solution to the Palestinian question and the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians according to the two-state solution”, said Antoine Camilleri, the Holy See’s deputy foreign minister.

In an interview with the Vatican’s Osservatore Romano newspaper, Camilleri said he hoped “the accord could, even in an indirect way, help the Palestinians in the establishment and recognition of an independent, sovereign and democratic state of Palestine.”

The Vatican’s position was seen by the Palestine Liberation Organisation as a “de facto” recognition.

“This includes the recognition of 1967 borders and thus Palestinian East Jerusalem, a courageous stance from the Vatican,” said a Palestinian official on condition of anonymity.

The Palestinian Authority considers the Vatican one of 136 countries to have recognised Palestine as a state, although the number is disputed and several recognitions by what are now European Union member states date back to the Soviet era.

BEIRUT — The lives of more than five million Syrians, including two million children, are at risk from explosive weapons used in the conflict, a non-governmental organisation said on Tuesday.

Handicap International warned that explosive weapons were being widely used in heavily populated areas in violation of international law, and that unexploded ordnance posed a long-term threat.

"In total, 5.1 million people — including 2 million children — are living in areas highly affected by the use of explosive weapons, creating an immediate and long-term threat to their lives," the NGO said.

It said use of the weapons by all parties to the conflict was having "dreadful consequences for civilians”.

“Because of their blast or fragmentation effects, explosive weapons kill or generate complex injuries,” the group’s regional coordinator Anne Garella said.

“The wide use of explosive weapons combined with the lack of appropriate surgical care in Syria has a devastating impact on people’s lives.”

The group’s study found explosive weapons had been “massively used” by all parties to the conflict, accounting for more than 80 per cent of all recorded incidents of violence.

Three-quarters of incidents involving the weapons were in densely populated areas, suggesting “that the belligerents have no intention of effectively distinguishing between civilians and combatants, a violation of international humanitarian law”, the report said.

The group noted that explosive weapons also pose a longer-term threat, creating injuries that can leave the wounded permanently disabled, but also exposing the population to unexploded ordnance.

“The impact of explosive weapons thus goes beyond the immediate casualties: the presence of explosive remnants of war remains an obstacle not only for the security and the wellbeing of the civilian population, but also for the overall reconstruction of the country.”

Handicap International urged parties to the conflict to end the use of explosive weapons in densely populated areas, and to facilitate humanitarian access to those injured.

It called on the international community to condemn the use of explosive weapons in populated areas and to enforce a UN Security Council resolution demanding unfettered humanitarian access in Syria.

More than 220,000 people have been killed in Syria since anti-government protests broke out in March 2011 spiralling into civil war in the face of a bloody crackdown by security forces.

The Syrian government has been repeatedly condemned for its widespread use of barrel bombs, crude weapons made from oil drums, gas cylinders or water tanks, packed with explosives and scrap metal and dropped from helicopters.

Rebel groups have been condemned for their use of rudimentary rockets that lack targeting mechanisms and have repeatedly hit civilian areas.