GENEVA: All Syrian sides that fought in the battle for Aleppo committed war crimes and the deal to evacuate civilians following the opposition defeat was a “crime of forced displacement,” a UN probe said Wednesday.
The United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) for Syria documented violations including chemical attacks and civilian executions perpetrated during the Damascus regime’s five-month siege of eastern Aleppo, which had been a key opposition stronghold.
From July 21, 2016 to Dec. 22, when regime troops recaptured the city, the Syrian air force and its Russian ally “conducted daily airstrikes” on Aleppo, the COI said.
There is conclusive evidence that Syrian aircraft dropped “toxic industrial chemicals, including chlorine,” but there is no information indicating the Russians used chemical weapons, the report said.
The aerial bombardments saw hospitals, markets and residential buildings repeatedly hit.
In a major new finding, investigators also said there was proof that Damascus was responsible for Sept. 19 airstrikes in Aleppo province that deliberately targeted a humanitarian convoy, killing at least 10 aid workers.
President Bashar Assad’s regime has fiercely denied responsibility for the bombardment in Urem Al-Kubra and a separate UN probe in December said it was impossible to establish blame.
But after analyzing satellite images, forensic evidence and other material the COI determined that “Syrian air forces targeted (the) humanitarian aid convoy.”
The evidence “strongly” suggests that the attack — which forced relief workers to pause deliveries of life-saving supplies — was “meticulously planned and ruthlessly carried out” to hinder humanitarian work, according to the inquiry.
The Syria COI, set up in 2011 to investigate the most serious crimes committed in the country’s civil war, was asked in October to specifically probe the battle for Aleppo.
Investigators described Aleppo as a scene of “unrelenting violence” in which civilians in the opposition-held east and regime-controlled west fell “victim to war crimes committed by all parties.”
The opposition factions in Aleppo, including former Al-Qaeda affiliate Fatah Al-Sham Front, shelled civilians in western Aleppo and indiscriminately fired with no clear military target, the COI said.
As the opposition resistance was crumbling and civilians tried to escape, “some armed groups violently prevented them and used them as human shields,” the inquiry further found.
The evacuation deal agreed between warring parties that effectively marked regime’s victory allowed for civilians to move into western Aleppo or be transported to Idlib.
Those evacuations, which were observed by UN staff and the International Committee of the Red Cross, left civilians with “no option to remain,” the COI said.
“Such agreements amount to the war crime of forced displacement of the civilian population,” UN investigators concluded, stressing that the deal in Aleppo was made “for strategic reasons — and not for the security of civilians.”
Meanwhile, peace talks in Geneva showed a first flicker of movement on Wednesday, as the opposition said regime negotiators had been pushed by their Russian allies to address for the first time opposition demands for a political transition.
Six days of UN-led talks, the first for almost 10 months, have focused almost entirely on how to arrange more substantive talks in later rounds. But after two hours closeted with UN mediator Staffan de Mistura on Wednesday, opposition negotiator Nasr Al-Hariri told reporters he had made “a good start.”
“There have been really deep discussions, for the first time,” he said. “We notice now that the political transition subject has become the main subject on the table.”
The opposition wants to discuss “political transition” because they see it as an end to Assad’s autocratic rule.
In the war zone, meanwhile, Syrian Army entered the ancient city of Palmyra late Wednesday after fierce battles against Daesh, a monitor said.
“The army has entered a western neighborhood of Palmyra and has seized control of part of it,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.
