(CNN) -- Both Syrian regime forces and anti-government rebels have committed war crimes in the Syrian conflict, a U.N. commission concluded Wednesday.
The U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry said government forces and their Shabiha militia allies committed crimes against humanity such as "murder and torture, war crimes and gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including unlawful killing, indiscriminate attacks against civilian populations and acts of sexual violence."
In the town of Houla on May 25, the commission said, President Bashar al-Assad's forces and militia allies were responsible for killing more than 100 civilians, nearly half of them children.
The anti-government armed groups that have emerged over the past year also have committed war crimes, including "murder, extrajudicial killings and torture," the report says. But the commission says these actions "were not of the same gravity, frequency and scale as the ones perpetrated by government forces and the militia."
The commission issued the report as fighting raged in Damascus and in other cities across the country. Since February 15, the report says, "the situation in the country has deteriorated significantly with armed violence spreading to new areas and active hostilities raging between rebels and the government and the militias."
At least 178 people died in Syria Wednesday, the opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria said. Ninety of them were in Aleppo province, and most of them were in Izzaz, a town near the Turkish border that was shelled by regime warplanes.
Meanwhile, Free Syrian Army rebels claimed responsibility for a blast targeting a military complex near a hotel housing U.N. monitors. At least three people were injured, state media said.
FSA Capt. Riad Ahmad said the Damascus blast targeted army buildings affiliated with al-Assad's Defense Ministry.
Speaking to CNN from Turkey, Ahmad said the United Nations was not the target of the attack. The Free Syrian Army is made up of many military defectors, and battalions across Syria fight the regime under its name.
State-run TV said an "armed terrorist group" attached the bomb to a diesel tanker behind the Dama Rose Hotel. The regime has consistently blamed terrorists for the violence that has wracked the nation.
The explosion wounded three people, but international observers tasked with monitoring the situation in Syria are safe and unharmed, state media said. Khaled al-Masri, a U.N. spokesman in Damascus, confirmed that U.N. observers were staying in the hotel but could not immediately confirm their condition.
Sander van Hoorn, a correspondent for NOS Dutch radio and TV, told CNN the blast came from small fuel truck inside a military compound and the hotel sustained minor damage. He was about 400 meters, or a quarter mile, away from the blast.
"The military compound comprised of several old buildings is walled, guarded and monitored with security cameras, so it is difficult to enter the compound without permission," he said. Further details about the compound were not available.
Images of the blast aftermath on the SANA website show a destroyed vehicle, firefighters at work and black smoke rising.
Elsewhere in Damascus, government security forces deployed in large numbers in several neighborhoods after the blast, opposition activists said. They reported clashes in the middle class neighborhood of Mazzeh behind the Iranian Embassy. Clashes have also erupted in other neighborhoods, including a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. At least 32 people died in Damascus and its suburbs, the LCC said.
Fierce fighting and shelling also raged in other regions, with 26 dead in Idlib and 21 dead in Homs, the group reported.
Opposition activists have put the death toll in the 17-month-long Syrian crisis at more than 20,000 and the violence has escalated in the capital and Aleppo.
Bombs have struck targets in Damascus, including the July 18 strike that killed four top-level government officials. Clashes raged from July 15 until five days later, when many rebels in Damascus retreated after Syria moved in combat forces and used heavy weapons.
Syria's most populous city, Aleppo, has been engulfed in fighting. Fighter jets launched rockets that hit a hospital in an opposition-controlled part of the metropolis. One attack on Sunday killed four civilians outside the building. Another Tuesday wounded two people and damaged the hospital building.
The strikes were reported by Human Rights Watch and CNN.
The hospital scene was chaotic, with one boy, 12-year-old Mohamed, screaming in pain from shrapnel injuries from an air raid.
A nurse, Abu Ismail, told CNN that treating the wounded is harder by the day because medical equipment isn't working.
The unrest, now regarded by Syrians, diplomats and analysts as a civil war, has taken its toll on the regime, one prominent defector said.
Riyad Hijab, the former Syrian prime minister who recently fled to neighboring Jordan to escape the al-Assad regime, said Tuesday that the "regime's morale, economy and military has completely collapsed and the regime is only in control of no more than 30% of Syrian lands."
Analyst Jeffrey White cites another grim scenario for the regime in an essay published Tuesday, saying that "given the recent battles in Damascus and Aleppo, the regime can no longer be confident of securing even the most critical parts of the country."
"For the regime, the war's trajectory is essentially downward. The speed of this descent is still in question, but not the process itself," said White, a defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former senior defense intelligence officer. The essay was published on the institute's website.
Because of the violence, the Syrian government faces a suspension from the global organization representing 1.5 billion Muslims, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Iran opposes the move by the group, which is convening in the Saudi city of Mecca.
As the chaos continues, Valerie Amos, the U.N.'s emergency relief coordinator, is in Damascus to "draw attention to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Syria," the United Nations said. She is scheduled to tour parts of the embattled capital and meet with Syria's foreign minister Wednesday.
CNN's Amir Ahmed, Ben Wedeman, Nic Robertson, and Holly Yan contributed to this report.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario