School was deliberately bombed, UN says

BEIRUT— A UN investigative commission said Tuesday it believes government forces deliberately bombed a school complex in Syria’s northern countryside in October, killing 21 children, in a scathing report on crimes committed over the last seven months of the Syrian war.

The UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria said government forces and their allies had shown a “complete disregard for civilian life and international law” through continued use of cluster munitions, incendiary weapons and chlorine gas as weapons of war.

It also pointed to an Al Qaeda-aligned insurgent group fighting on the side of Syria’s rebels and a U.S.backed Kurdish group for conscripting adolescents for combat.

The commission said the Oct. 26 attack on the Haas village school complex in the rebel-held province of Idlib constituted a war crime. It said the Syrian air force is the only one known to operate the jets identified in the attack.

The UN commission’s findings came the same day that a Physicians for Human Rights report accused the Syrian government of wilfully denying international shipments of food and medicine to millions of Syrians in besieged areas. The UN commission’s report also concluded that government forces deliberately targeted the capital’s water supply infrastructure last December, threatening supplies to 5.5 million people.

The Syrian government and its ally Russia maintain they are fighting terrorism.

A government delegation led by Syria’s UN ambassador Bashar Jaafari, meanwhile, began meetings Tuesday with Russian officials in the Kazakhstan capital of Astana.

It is the third summit in Astana running parallel to political talks in Geneva between the government and the opposition. The Astana summits centre on ceasefire and humanitarian relief co-ordination, but they have borne few results.