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Air strikes,
shelling and rocket fire had been consistently used in recent
attacks on civilian areas, the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on
Syria said in a statement.
"Failure to respect the laws of war must have consequences for
the perpetrators," its chairman, Paulo Pinheiro, said.
"Until the culture of impunity is uprooted, civilians will
continue to be targeted, victimized and brutally killed.”
International law requires all parties to the conflict to
distinguish between lawful and unlawful targets, but that
distinction had been ignored and some recent attacks had been
war crimes, the statement said.
It cited an attack on the al-Quds hospital in Aleppo governorate
on April 27 and other attacks on nearby medical facilities, and
air strikes on markets, bakeries and a water station, as well as
the May 5 attack on a refugee camp in Idlib.
Those attacks all happened after a two-month ceasefire, brokered
by Russia and the United states, unraveled, and Syrian
government forces said they would launch an assault to recapture
rebel-held areas of Aleppo.
The statement did not explicitly attribute blame for attacks on
civilians, but only Syria's government and its ally Russia are
using aircraft in the conflict.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein,
said last week that initial reports suggested Syrian government
aircraft were responsible for the attack on the refugee camp in
Idlib governorate, which killed about 30 people. Syria's
military said they had not targeted the camp.
(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Louise Ireland)
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