GENEVA: Airstrikes by Russia and a US-led coalition killed civilians in Syria on a large scale last year, while the Assad regime carried out unlawful chemical weapon attacks in opposition-held Eastern Ghouta, UN war crimes investigators said on Tuesday.
Daesh fighters and other insurgent groups committed war crimes including deadly attacks on civilians and using them as human shields, the investigators said in their latest report covering six months through Jan. 15.
During the period, “victims of the Syrian conflict have suffered greatly as violence countrywide re-escalated to new heights,” the UN Commission of Inquiry said.
“(Syrian) government forces continued to use chemical weapons against armed group fighters in Eastern Ghouta,” it said in its report.
Among other key findings, it said that an airstrike by a “Russian fixed-wing aircraft” using unguided weapons last November hit a market killing at least 84 people in Atareb, west of Aleppo, in a “de-escalation zone” declared by Russia, Iran and Turkey.
It found no evidence that the Russian strike had deliberately targeted the market, but said “this attack may amount to the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in death and injury to civilians,” the first time it has explicitly implicated Moscow in possible war crimes.
And three US-led coalition strikes on a school near Raqqa in March 2017 killed 150 residents — roughly five times the toll acknowledged by the Pentagon, which said at the time that dozens of militants and not civilians were killed.
The UN investigators found no evidence that Daesh fighters were at the site, and said the US-led coalition had violated international law by failing in its duty to protect civilians.
The independent investigators called on all sides to allow access to besieged areas and all detainees. Justice must be served in any peace deal ending the conflict soon entering its eighth year, they said.
The report is based on 500 confidential interviews conducted with victims and witnesses abroad or in Syria via social media. The Assad regime has never let the team into the country.
“Vital civilian infrastructure has been decimated by repeated attacks on medical facilities, schools and markets. Humanitarian aid has been instrumentalized as a weapon of war with siege warfare and denial of life-giving assistance used to compel civilian communities and parties to the conflict alike to surrender or starve,” it said.
The regime forces used chemical weapons against insurgents in Eastern Ghouta, including chlorine three times in July, and in Harasta on the western edge of the zone in November, the report said.
“The use of chemical weapons is prohibited under customary international humanitarian law regardless of the presence of a valid military target, including when used against enemy fighters,” it said.
The multi-sided Syrian civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven at least 11 million from their homes. Neighbouring countries and global powers have entered the conflict, backing allied forces on the ground.
The UN investigators, noting that efforts for the UN Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC) have stalled, due to Russian vetoes, welcomed national jurisdictions taking up more cases.
Victims must be helped to obtain justice, which should be a “central component” of any negotiated settlement ending the war, they said.
The UN’s findings were released even as fighting continued to rage around the eastern suburbs of Damascus, with the first aid delivery in weeks to reach the besieged area cut short after the regime forces began shelling the area while aid workers were still inside.
The Syrian American Medical Society charity, which supports hospitals in Eastern Ghouta, said 79 people were killed in shelling and airstrikes, as the regime, supported by Russia’s military, pushed its assault on the opposition-held suburbs.
Monday’s aid shipment was the first to enter Eastern Ghouta amid weeks of a crippling siege and a regime assault that has killed close to 800 civilians since Feb. 18. Aid agencies, however, said Syrian authorities removed basic health supplies, including trauma, surgical kits and insulin, from the convoys before they set off.
Russian, US airstrikes killed hundreds of Syrians last year: UN
Russian, US airstrikes killed hundreds of Syrians last year: UN
Israel strikes Yemen’s Sana’a airport, ports and power stations
- Houthis said that multiple air raids targeted an airport, military air base and a power station in Yemen
JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said it struck multiple targets linked to the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen on Thursday, including Sana’a International Airport and three ports along the western coast.
Attacks hit Yemen’s Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations as well as military infrastructure in the ports of Hodeidah, Salif and Ras Kanatib, Israel’s military added.
The Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles toward Israel in what they describe as acts of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
The Israeli attacks on the airport, Hodeidah and on one power station, were reported by Al Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by the Houthis.
More than a year of Houthi attacks have disrupted international shipping routes, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys that have in turn stoked fears over global inflation.
Israel has instructed its diplomatic missions in Europe to try to get the Houthis designated as a terrorist organization.
The UN Security Council is due to meet on Monday over Houthi attacks against Israel, Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon said on Wednesday.
On Saturday, Israel’s military failed to intercept a missile from Yemen that fell in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area, injuring 14 people.
Syria authorities say torched 1 million captagon pills
DAMASCUS: Syria’s new authorities torched a large stockpile of drugs on Wednesday, two security officials told AFP, including one million pills of captagon, whose industrial-scale production flourished under ousted president Bashar Assad.
Captagon is a banned amphetamine-like stimulant that became Syria’s largest export during the country’s more than 13-year civil war, effectively turning it into a narco state under Assad.
“We found a large quantity of captagon, around one million pills,” said a balaclava-wearing member of the security forces, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Osama, and whose khaki uniform bore a “public security” patch.
An AFP journalist saw forces pour fuel over and set fire to a cache of cannabis, the painkiller tramadol, and around 50 bags of pink and yellow captagon pills in a security compound formerly belonging to Assad’s forces in the capital’s Kafr Sousa district.
Captagon has flooded the black market across the region in recent years, with oil-rich Saudi Arabia a major destination.
“The security forces of the new government discovered a drug warehouse as they were inspecting the security quarter,” said another member of the security forces, who identified himself as Hamza.
Authorities destroyed the stocks of alcohol, cannabis, captagon and hashish in order to “protect Syrian society” and “cut off smuggling routes used by Assad family businesses,” he added.
Syria’s new Islamist rulers have yet to spell out their policy on alcohol, which has long been widely available in the country.
Since an Islamist-led rebel alliance toppled Assad on December 8 after a lightning offensive, Syria’s new authorities have said massive quantities of captagon have been found in former government sites around the country, including security branches.
AFP journalists in Syria have seen fighters from Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) set fire to what they said were stashes of captagon found at facilities once operated by Assad’s forces.
Security force member Hamza confirmed Wednesday that “this is not the first initiative of its kind — the security services, in a number of locations, have found other warehouses... and drug manufacturing sites and destroyed them in the appropriate manner.”
Maher Assad, a military commander and the brother of Bashar Assad, is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.
Experts believe Syria’s former leader used the threat of drug-fueled unrest to put pressure on Arab governments.
A Saudi delegation met Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, a source close to the government told AFP, to discuss the “Syria situation and captagon.”
Jordan in recent years has also cracked down on the smuggling of weapons and drugs including captagon along its 375-kilometer (230-mile) border with Syria.
Jordan says 18,000 Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall
AMMAN: About 18,000 Syrians have crossed into their country from Jordan since the government of Bashar Assad was toppled earlier this month, Jordanian authorities said on Thursday.
Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya told state TV channel Al-Mamlaka that “around 18,000 Syrians have returned to their country between the fall of the regime of Bashar Assad on December 8, 2024 until Thursday.”
He said the returnees included 2,300 refugees registered with the United Nations.
Amman says it has hosted about 1.3 million Syrians who fled their country since civil war broke out in 2011, with 650,000 formally registered with the United Nations.
Lebanon hopes for neighborly relations in first message to new Syria government
- Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war
- Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders
DUBAI: Lebanon said on Thursday it was looking forward to having the best neighborly relations with Syria, in its first official message to the new administration in Damascus.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib passed the message to his Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, in a phone call, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said on X.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war, before bringing its fighters back to Lebanon over the last year to fight in a bruising war with Israel – a redeployment which weakened Syrian government lines.
Under Assad, Hezbollah used Syria to bring in weapons and other military equipment from Iran, through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon. But on Dec. 6, anti-Assad fighters seized the border with Iraq and cut off that route, and two days later, Islamist militants captured the capital Damascus.
Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders after toppling Assad.
Iraqi intelligence chief discusses border security with new Syrian administration
BAGHDAD: An Iraqi delegation met with Syria’s new rulers in Damascus on Thursday, an Iraqi government spokesman said, the latest diplomatic outreach more than two weeks after the fall of Bashar Assad’s rule.
The delegation, led by Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid Al-Shatri, “met with the new Syrian administration,” government spokesman Bassem Al-Awadi told state media, adding that the parties discussed “the developments in the Syrian arena, and security and stability needs on the two countries’ shared border.”
