The plane carried out a series of attacks in November on the town of Al Atarib,
\nwest of Aleppo, killing at least 84 people and injuring more than 150, the United
\nNations Commission of Inquiry on Syria said.
\nThe strikes may not have specifically targeted civilians, the panel ruled, but the
\nuse of unguided blast bombs in a densely populated area could amount to a war
\ncrime on the part of Russia, which has played a crucial role in backing the Syrian
\ngovernment.
\nThe finding formed part of the panel\u2019s 15th report on the conflict in Syria, which
\nalso said that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in rebel-held areas
\nof Damascus and that the United States-led coalition had inflicted heavy casualties
\nin airstrikes aimed at Islamic State forces.
\n\u201cAll parties share guilt for completely disregarding the rules of war and for
\nfailing to adequately protect civilians,\u201d the panel\u2019s chairman, Paulo S\u00e9rgio Pinheiro,
\ntold reporters in Geneva.<\/p>\n
The grim conclusions, based on more than 500 interviews, coincided with
\nreports of heavy civilian casualties in the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta, where
\nSyrian and Russian forces pushed on with a ferocious offensive aimed at crushing
\nthe last major rebel stronghold in the area.
\nAirstrikes and shelling there on Monday killed 94 civilians, according to the
\nUnion of Medical Care and Relief Organizations, based in France. They also forced
\nan aid convoy, the first to reach the enclave in over three months, to leave before it
\nhad fully unloaded.
\nUnited Nations investigators had previously reported Russia\u2019s critical role in the
\nwar in the two years since it stepped in to rescue of President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s
\nfaltering army, but a panel member, Hanny Megally, said this was the first time the
\ncommission had been able to nail down Russian involvement in a specific incident.
\nThe panel cited evidence from early warning observers in Syria, who tracked the
\nfixed-wing aircraft from a Russian air base 100 miles from Al Atarib, until its attacks
\nin the early afternoon, when the town\u2019s market was crowded with people who had
\nleft work.
\nThe panel also rejected the United States-led coalition\u2019s account of multiple
\nairstrikes last March on a school building in Raqqa Province, which investigators
\nsaid killed at least 150 of the 200 civilians who were housed there after fleeing
\nfighting elsewhere. The panel said it had found no evidence to support the coalition\u2019s
\nclaim that the school was occupied by Islamic State fighters.
\nThe coalition attack did not amount to a war crime because it had no intent of
\nhitting a civilian target, the panel concluded, but had violated international law by
\nfailing to take adequate precautions to protect civilians.
\nThe international coalition had also inflicted countless civilian casualties in
\ndaily airstrikes on Islamic State fighters in the city of Raqqa, launching attacks even
\nthough the militants were using civilians as human shields, the panel said.
\nThe commission also faulted the coalition-backed Syrian Democratic Forces
\nover their internment of some 80,000 civilians who had fled the fighting around Islamic State strongholds in Raqqa and Deir al-Zour to vet them for possible links to
\nthe jihadists.
\nThey continued to keep thousands of internally displaced people in camps,
\ninvestigators said, including women, children and the disabled, in what the panel
\nsaid amounted to arbitrary and unlawful detention.
\nAfter six and a half years collecting evidence, commission members said on
\nTuesday that they planned to work vigorously on behalf of the victims but
\nemphasized \u201cthere can be no trade-off between justice for the victims and a viable
\npolitical solution\u201d to the conflict.
\nThe panel will present its findings to the Human Rights Council in Geneva next
\nweek and urged it to \u201censure that there are no pardons or amnesties for those
\nresponsible for ordering or carrying out gross human rights violations and
\ncommitting international crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The plane carried out a series of attacks in November on the town of Al Atarib, west of Aleppo, killing at least 84 people and injuring more than 150, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria said. The strikes may not have specifically targeted civilians, the panel ruled, but the use of unguided blast bombs in a densely populated… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1489,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488\/revisions\/1489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}