Both sides in last year’s battle for Syria’s Aleppo city committed war crimes, including a “deliberate” bombing of a humanitarian convoy by the Syrian government, according to a new United Nations investigation.
The UN Commission of Inquiry’s report released on Wednesday said Syrian government and allied Russian forces “pervasively used” unguided munitions to bomb densely populated areas in rebel-held eastern Aleppo between July and its fall on December 22, amounting to the war crime of indiscriminate attacks.
These included aerial bombs, air-to-surface rockets, cluster munitions, incendiary bombs, barrel bombs, and weapons delivering toxic industrial chemicals.
But investigators could not say whether both Syrian and Russian forces had used them in Aleppo or only one had. Neither did they attribute any specific war crime investigated to Russian forces.
“Throughout the period under review, the skies over Aleppo city and its environs were jointly controlled by Syrian and Russian air forces … (They) use predominantly the same aircraft and weapons, thus rendering attribution impossible in many cases,” the report said.
Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city and former commercial hub, had been divided into rebel and government parts since 2012.
