November 23, 2024 14:29 (IST)
Follow us:
facebook-white sharing button
twitter-white sharing button
instagram-white sharing button
youtube-white sharing button
'Third World War has begun:' Ex-Ukraine military commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny | UK-India Free Trade Agreement negotiations to resume in early 2024 | UK can arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits country based on ICC warrant | Centre to send over 10,000 additional soldiers to violence-hit Manipur amid fresh violence | Chhattisgarh: 10 Maoists killed during encounter with security forces in Sukma
Siege of Syria’s eastern Ghouta ‘barbaric and medieval’, says UN Commission of Inquiry

Siege of Syria’s eastern Ghouta ‘barbaric and medieval’, says UN Commission of Inquiry

| @indiablooms | 21 Jun 2018, 02:26 am

New York,June 21 (IBNS): The siege of eastern Ghouta in war-torn Syria, which lasted more than five years, has been labelled “barbaric and medieval” — “amounting” to war crimes, and crimes against humanity, a high-level UN inquiry said on Wednesday.

In a 23-page report on the siege mounted against the densely populated suburb close to the capital Damascus, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic details the events that led to its recapture by pro-Government forces in April this year, following a “dramatically escalating” military campaign.

Neighbourhoods suffered aerial and ground bombardments “which claimed the lives of hundreds of Syrian men, women and children”, the report notes, with “numerous homes, markets and hospitals all but razed to the ground”.

These indiscriminate, “widespread and systematic bombardments” and the act of deliberately attacking protected objects, amounted to war crimes, it continues.

Commenting on the events in eastern Ghouta, Commission of Inquiry Chair, Paulo Pinheiro, condemned the civilian deaths as “abhorrent”.

In addition to the deadly violence they faced, families were denied food and medicine, the veteran rights expert noted, before adding that “no warring party acted to protect the civilian population” during the last phase of the siege.

According to the report, between February and April this year, besieged armed groups and terrorist organizations based inside eastern Ghouta “relentlessly fired” unguided mortars into Damascus city and nearby areas, “killing and maiming” hundreds of Syrian civilians.

Insisting that “there can be no justification” for the indiscriminate shelling of inhabited areas, Commissioner Hanny Megally said that this, too, amounted to a war crime.

According to the report, by the time Government forces declared eastern Ghouta recaptured on 14 April, some 140,000 individuals had fled their homes and up to 50,000 were evacuated to Idlib and Aleppo governorates.

“Tens of thousands” of people have been unlawfully interned by Government forces in what the report’s authors call “managed sites” in rural Damascus, which includes Ghouta.

Their number includes women and children, which is “reprehensible”, Commissioner Karen Koning AbuZayd said.

The report is scheduled to be formally presented next week, on 26 June, during an interactive dialogue at the current session of the Human Rights Council.

 

OCHA


 

Support Our Journalism

We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism

IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.

Support objective journalism for a small contribution.
Related Images
Xi Jinping, Putin in Russia 22 Mar 2023, 02:56 pm
Related Videos