The letter made no mention of Khan al-Assal, but it “condemns all atrocities committed by all parties” and reiterates the coalition’s pledge to assist the U.N

BEIRUT United Nations experts are investigating allegations that rebels killed dozens of Syrian soldiers in a village near Aleppo after they captured it from government troops, an incident that could amount to a war crime, the world body’s human rights chief said Friday.

Navi Pillay said in a statement that a U.N team in the region is looking into reports about killings that followed the battle in Khan al-Assal in July. Pillay said the team has examined activists’ videos and collected accounts from people in Aleppo on an incident that she called “deeply shocking.”

While abuses by troops loyal to President Bashar Assad have been systematic and widespread throughout the two-year conflict, human rights groups have said the frequency and scale of rebel abuses also has increased in recent months. Specific allegations against opposition fighters include claims that rebels have routinely killed captured soldiers and suspected regime informers.

Rebels say any such violations are condemned and an unfortunate result of the brutal regime crackdown.

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council obtained Friday by The Associated Press, the opposition Syrian National Coalition urged council members to “take immediate steps to refer the Syrian case to the International Criminal Court,” the world’s permanent war crimes tribunal.

“Only by holding the violators of human rights accountable for their crime will the violence in Syria end,” said the letter dated Aug. 1 and signed by the coalition’s U.N. representative, Najib Ghadbian.

The letter made no mention of Khan al-Assal, but it “condemns all atrocities committed by all parties” and reiterates the coalition’s pledge to assist the U.N. commission investigating human rights abuses in Syria, “including in liberated areas.”

The coalition noted Monday’s statement by Paulo Pinheiro, head of the U.N. commission investigating human rights abuses in Syria, to the U.N. General Assembly saying “massacres and other unlawful killings are perpetrated with impunity” — most by pro-government forces and some by anti-government armed groups.

Opposition fighters in recent weeks have suffered major setbacks on the battlefield. Infighting among various armed groups also has plagued rebel ranks, 부산출장안마 weakening the opposition’s campaign against Assad’s rule.

The capturing of Khan al-Assal on July 21 was a rare success for the opposition, one overshadowed by activists’ claims that rebels had killed 150 government soldiers after taking the village. Some of the soldiers who were killed had surrendered to the rebels, the Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Syrian state media reported that rebels killed 123 “civilians and military personnel” in Khan al-Assal.

In a statement issued in Geneva on Friday, Pillay said two of the videos the U.N. team reviewed apparently show government soldiers being ordered to lie on the ground, while another shows several bodies scattered along a wall and a number of bodies at an adjacent site.

Preliminary findings of the U.N. probe also suggests that armed opposition groups, in one incident documented by video, executed at least 30 individuals, the majority of whom appeared to be soldiers, Pillay said.

“These images, if verified, suggest that executions were committed in Khan Al-Assal,” Pillay said. She called for a “thorough independent investigation to establish whether war crimes have been committed.”

She also warned that opposition forces “should not think they are immune from prosecution.”

Related Posts

ST
“It will depend on whether any UN member state goes to the secretary-general and says we should look at this event,” Sellstrom told TT from Damascus. “We are in place.” Just hours after Sellstrom made the comments, French President Francois Hollande said in a regular cabinet meeting that the latest allegations of a chemical attack “require verification and confirmation,” according to government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. Vallaud-Belkacem said Holland would ask the UN team to go to the site “to shed full light” on the allegations. CBS News correspondent Holly Williams reported, however, that it wasn’t immediately clear whether the Syrian government would grant the UN team access to the Ghouta suburbs to gather evidence. Ahmed al-Jarba, the head of the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition, and the London-based Syrian Observatory opposition group also called on the U.N. team to investigate the incidents. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a British expert in chemical and biological weapons, told CBSNews.com on Wednesday that, based on the reported death tolls and the available video evidence — which he stressed he could not authenticate independently — it appeared that a weapon of mass destruction like Sarin gas was probably involved. In many of the smaller-scale attacks across Syria, de Bretton-Gordon has said small quantities of Sarin, or far weaker organophosphate compounds, could have been to blame, and it is feasible that poorly-trained rebel forces could have been behind such attacks. “Sarin is 4,000-times more powerful than organophosphates,” he explained, suggesting that if the toxic gas was used Wednesday on a large scale, it was “very unlikely” that opposition fighters could have been behind the attacks, as they “just don’t have access to that level of chemical weapons and the delivery means” needed to disperse them so widely. Damascus, the sprawling ancient capital city and President Assad’s base of power since the conflict erupted, had come under increasing pressure from rebel forces, which had tried to advance on the city center primarily from the east. Baghdadi reported that, according to eyewitnesses, the fierce military offensive began around 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday. One man said he counted about seven air raids and dozens of shelling targeting the district of Jobar, less than one mile from a main square in the capital. On Sunday, the 20-member U.N. chemical weapons team, led by Sellstrom, arrived in Damascus to investigate three sites where chemical weapons attacks allegedly occurred. The sites they were meant to probe are the village of Khan al-Assal just west of the embattled northern city of Aleppo and two other locations, which are being kept secret for security reasons. The Syrian government has always denied claims by the opposition of chemical weapons use, saying rebels fighting to overthrow Assad’s government have used such weapons.
May’s flood caused more than $2 billion in damage in Nashville alone, and there was widespread damage throughout middle Tennessee

No comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *