Rights group calls for UN arms embargo on Syria over barrel bombs

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Syrian government troops carried out hundreds of indiscriminate aerial attacks in the past year, most with barrel bombs, in defiance of a United Nations Security Council demand to stop, a U.S. rights group said, calling for a U.N. arms embargo.

The barrel bombs, containers packed with explosives and projectiles that are dropped from helicopters, have killed thousands of civilians, Human Rights Watch said, adding that Syrian forces had carried out at least 1,450 air attacks in southwestern Daraa and northern Aleppo in the past 11 months.