It is interesting to go from reading the WWII+70 years history (51 sq. miles of Toyko wiped out, 1 to 2 million dead) to today, where a country at war somehow feels the need to deny they used a “barrel bomb.”
Its not a very intense war in fact. Just, at this point, very extended. All sides are very weak, in a conventional military sense.
The Syrian government is using barrel bombs because its run out of proper ones, and because the other side lacks AA guns to shoot down the helicopters and transport planes they are dropped from.
The Turks or maybe even the Jordanians, possibly, could roll over the lot of them in a week or so.