UN report: All Syrian sides committed war crimes in Aleppo
geneva — War crimes were committed by all Syrian sides during the battle for Aleppo, which included chemical weapons attacks, civilian executions and forced displacements following the rebel defeat, a UN probe said on Wednesday.
The United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) for Syria documented the violations in a report covering July 21 to December 22 last year — the government’s fivemonth siege of eastern Aleppo.
“The scale of what happened in Aleppo is unprecedented in the Syrian conflict”, COI chairman Paulo Pinheiro told reporters in Geneva.
The Syrian air force and its Russian ally “conducted daily air strikes” on Aleppo, an iconic city that was once the country’s economic capital but has now been reduced to rubble, the COI said.
There is conclusive evidence that Syrian aircraft dropped “toxic industrial chemicals, including chlorine”, the inquiry found. However, no information indicates the Russians used chemical weapons, it added.
The bombardments saw hospitals, markets and residential buildings repeatedly hit.
In a major new finding, investigators also said there was proof that Damascus was responsible
The syrian air force and its russian ally conducted daily air strikes on aleppo. There is conclusive evidence that syrian aircraft dropped toxic industrial chemicals, including chlorine UN inquiry report
for September 19 air strikes in Aleppo province that deliberately targeted a humanitarian convoy, killing at least 10 aid workers.
President Bashar Al Assad’s government has categorically denied responsibility for the bombardment in Urem Al Kubra and a separate UN probe in December said it was impossible to establish blame.
Pinheiro voiced frustration that Assad’s government did not cooperate with the probe, even after he told Damascus “it was in their interest to have their narrative” included in the findings.
Investigators described Aleppo as a scene of “unrelenting violence” in which civilians in the rebel-held east and government-controlled west fell “victim to war crimes committed by all parties”. — AFP