UN says it is ‘likely’ Assad forces used chlorine gas on civilians

The Syrian government has likely used chlorine gas to attack civilians while the Islamic State group has committed crimes against humanity with attacks on civilians in two provinces, an independent UN commission said yesterday.

The report from the commission, which has been tasked to investigate potential war crimes in the country, marks the first time the UN has assigned blame for the use of the chemical agent. Specifically, the commission said “reasonable grounds exist to believe” that government forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad unleashed a chemical agent, likely chlorine, on civilians in northern Syrian villages eight times in April.

According to the report, victims and medical personnel described symptoms caused by exposure to chemicals and witnesses told of a chlorine-like smell immediately after seeing government helicopters drop barrel bombs on the civilian-inhabited areas in Idlib and Hama provinces eight times between April 11-29.

The commission also noted widespread and systematic civilian killings by Islamic State, which now controls a swath of north and eastern Syria. It said attacks have taken place in the northern province of Aleppo and in the northeastern region of Raqqa, a stronghold of the group. The findings mean UN officials believe Islamic State has committed crimes against humanity in Syria and Iraq, the two countries in which it has carved out a self-styled caliphate.

“This is a continuation — and a geographic expansion — of the widespread and systematic attack on the civilian population,” according to the report by the four-member commission, chaired by Brazilian diplomat and scholar Paulo Sergio Pinheiro.

The group’s beheading of an American journalist and its declaration of a state governed by a harsh interpretation of Islamic law across Iraq and Syria have inserted a new dynamic into the international standoff over the war.

The latest report, based on 480 interviews and documentary material, cited dozens of documented public executions in Aleppo and Raqqa during the bloody and complex Syrian civil war that the UN says has killed more than 190,000 people.

Crowds of people including children have reportedly watched as the group’s fighters pronounce mostly adult men guilty of violating religious laws, and then behead them or shoot them in the head at close range. The purpose, according to the commission, is “to instil terror among the population, ensuring submission to its authority.”

Photos posted online yesterday show the aftermath of the Islamic State group’s takeover of the Tabqa air base in Raqqa province. In one photo, masked gunmen can be seen shooting seven men kneeling on the ground.

The commission also said Assad’s forces continue to perpetrate crimes against humanity through systematic murder, torture, rape and disappearances.