NEW YORK,: The UN’s human rights chief has warned that attacks on Syria’s Eastern Ghouta probably amount to “war crimes” and that those behind the targeting of civilians will be held to account.
“I must emphasise that what we are seeing, in Eastern Ghouta and elsewhere in Syria, are likely war crimes, and potentially, crimes against humanity,” Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said at an emergency meeting of the UN Human Rights Council on Friday.
“The perpetrators of these crimes must know they are being identified; that dossiers are being built up with a view to their prosecution; and that they will be held accountable for what they have done,” he added.
His comments come as some 400,000 civilians trapped in the besieged rebel-held suburb of Damascus are subject to a campaign of bombardment by Syrian government and Russian warplanes, which has killed at least 674 people and wounded hundreds more just two weeks, according to the White Helmets volunteer group.
Hussein said civilians were being “pounded into submission or death” in the Syrian government offensive and that aid was being prevented from entering the area.
The UN official pointed to the prosecution of Serbian and Argentinian war criminals, as examples of justice being meted out to perpetrators of crimes against civilians. “The wheels of justice may be slow, but they do grind,” he said.
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