UN: Aleppo aerial bombardment was war crime

By Fatih Erel

GENEVA (AA) - The aerial bombardment of eastern Aleppo by Russian and Syrian forces was a war crime, a UN panel on Syria said on Wednesday.

“Between July and December 2016, Syrian and Russian forces carried out daily air strikes, claiming hundreds of lives and reducing hospitals, schools and markets to rubble. Syrian forces also used chlorine bombs in residential areas, resulting in hundreds of civilian casualties," said a report based on 291 interviews by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria in its probe of events in Aleppo.

The Aleppo aerial campaign deliberately targeted hospitals and humanitarian convoys and constituted a war crime, the report said.

"Throughout 2016, Syrian air forces launched air strikes using chlorine bombs in eastern Aleppo city," the report said.

The use of air-delivered cluster munitions increased during the period under review, the report said.

"The UN Security Council is doing nothing" about war crimes in Syria, panel member Carla del Ponte told a news conference in Geneva.

"The brutal tactics used by the parties to the conflict in Syria as they engaged in the decisive battle for Aleppo city between July and December 2016 resulted in unparalleled suffering for Syrian men, women and children and amount to war crimes," said the commission’s chair, Paulo Pinheiro.

Syrian aircraft used chlorine -- a chemical agent prohibited under international law -- against the civilian population of eastern Aleppo, causing significant physical and psychological harm to hundreds of civilians, Pinheiro said.

"By late November 2016, when pro-Government forces on the ground took control over eastern Aleppo, no functioning hospitals or other medical facilities remained. The intentional targeting of these medical facilities amounts to war crimes," the commission added.