The Syrian government and Islamic State insurgents are both committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in their increasingly brutal fight against each other, UN investigators said yesterday.
Islamic State forces in northern Syria are waging a campaign to instil fear, including amputations, public executions and whippings, they said.
Government forces have dropped barrel bombs on civilian areas, including some believed to contain the chemical agent chlorine in eight incidents in April, and have committed killings, torture and other war crimes that should be prosecuted, they said in a report issued in Geneva.
“Violence has bled over the borders of the Syrian Arab Republic, with extremism fuelling the conflict’s heightened brutality,” said the 45-page report.
Deaths in custody in Syrian jails are on the rise and forensic analysis of 26,948 photographs allegedly taken from 2011-2013 in government detention centres back its “longstanding findings of systematic torture and deaths of detainees.”
“Forced truces, a mark of the government’s strategy of siege and bombardment, are often followed by mass arrests of men of fighting age, many of whom disappear,” it said.
The UN report is based on 480 interviews and documentary evidence gathered by its team, which is trying to build a case for future criminal prosecution.
Islamic forces have drawn more experienced and ideologically motivated foreign fighters and established control over large areas in northern and eastern Syria, particularly oil-rich Deir al-Zor, it said.
