Category Archives: United Nations

After Kerry calls for grounding of military aircraft, Russia and Syrian government hit Aleppo with heaviest attack in months

The New York Times reports: Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday called for an immediate grounding of all military aircraft in what he described as “key areas” of Syria — including where aid is delivered — as a last-ditch effort to save an agreement with Russia to reduce violence and ultimately halt a war that shows no sign of slowing.

Speaking in an unusually pointed and partly unscripted session at a United Nations Security Council meeting on the Syria crisis, Mr. Kerry angrily accused Russia of living “in a parallel universe” and allowing President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to extend “the greatest humanitarian catastrophe since World War II.” [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Warplanes mounted the heaviest air strikes in months against rebel-held districts of the city of Aleppo overnight, as Russia and the Syrian government spurned a U.S. plea to halt flights, burying any hope for the revival of a doomed ceasefire.

Rebel officials and rescue workers said incendiary bombs were among the weapons that rained from the sky on the city. Hamza al-Khatib, the director of a hospital in the rebel-held east, told Reuters the death toll was 45.

“It’s as if the planes are trying to compensate for all the days they didn’t drop bombs” during the ceasefire, Ammar al-Selmo, the head of the civil defence rescue service in opposition-held eastern Aleppo told Reuters.

“It was like there was coordination between the planes and the artillery shelling, because the shells were hitting the same locations that the planes hit,” he said.

The assault, by aircraft from the Syrian government, its Russian allies or both, made clear that Moscow and Damascus had rejected a plea by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to halt flights so that aid could be delivered and a ceasefire salvaged. [Continue reading…]

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This is how Russia bombed the UN aid convoy near Aleppo

The Daily Beast reports: The international reaction to Monday night’s devastating attack on an aid convoy in the Syrian town of Urem al-Kubra has been swift and furious. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in an unusually forthright speech at the General Assembly, described the attack as “savage and apparently deliberate.” He concluded by saying the fate of Syria could not depend on the “future of one man,” namely Bashar al-Assad.

According to a statement released Wednesday by the Free Syrian Army, 31 people in total died—19 civilians and 12 aid workers. The director of the local branch of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), Omar Barakat, was among those killed. At least 18 trucks carrying humanitarian aid were destroyed, along with a SARC warehouse and a health clinic.

While aid agencies are naturally hesitant to ascribe direct blame, suspicion fell at once upon the Assad regime and Russia, which are the only air powers operating in this area of Syria.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has gone to great lengths to deflect blame, even claiming that video of the aftermath of the attack shows no sign of damage from an air strike, and suggesting the convoy was attacked by Syrian rebel fighters on the ground. To lend weight to the latter scenario, the MOD released drone footage of a pickup truck towing what it said was a mortar, moving past the convoy in rebel-held territory.

The Russians also have claimed the trucks might have been destroyed by spontaneous combustion.

However, there is a mounting body of evidence that makes it clear the Syrian regime and, in particular, the Russian military, hold responsibility for the atrocity. [Continue reading…]

Bellingcat provides more analysis on the attack.

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U.S. officials say Russia probably attacked UN humanitarian convoy

The New York Times reports: Russia was probably responsible for the deadly bombing of a United Nations humanitarian aid convoy in Syria, American officials said Tuesday, further shredding what remained of a severely weakened agreement between the United States and Russia aimed at halting the war.

Aghast at the attack on Monday night, United Nations officials on Tuesday suspended all aid convoys in Syria, describing the bombing as a possible war crime and a cowardly act.

The suspension was announced as the United Nations was convening its annual General Assembly meetings in New York, where the five-year-old Syria war has become the organization’s most anguishing challenge.

“Just when we think it cannot get any worse, the bar of depravity sinks lower,” Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in his opening remarks to the gathering, his last as leader of the United Nations after 10 years. Mr. Ban called the attack on the convoy “sickening, savage and apparently deliberate.”

Publicly, the Obama administration said it held Russia responsible, in its role as a sponsor of the partial cease-fire agreement that it reached last week with United States. But the Americans still held out the possibility of salvaging the agreement. Benjamin Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, said Russia should have ensured a halt to air operations in an area where “humanitarian assistance is flowing.”

Privately, American officials said their intelligence information suggested Russian aircraft had actually carried out the attack. [Continue reading…]

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George Soros: Why I’m investing $500 million in migrants

George Soros writes: The world has been unsettled by a surge in forced migration. Tens of millions of people are on the move, fleeing their home countries in search of a better life abroad. Some are escaping civil war or an oppressive regime; others are forced out by extreme poverty, lured by the possibility of economic advancement for themselves and their families.

Our collective failure to develop and implement effective policies to handle the increased flow has contributed greatly to human misery and political instability — both in countries people are fleeing and in the countries that host them, willingly or not. Migrants are often forced into lives of idle despair, while host countries fail to reap the proven benefit that greater integration could bring.

Governments must play the leading role in addressing this crisis by creating and sustaining adequate physical and social infrastructure for migrants and refugees. But harnessing the power of the private sector is also critical.

Recognizing this, the Obama administration recently launched a “Call to Action” asking U.S. companies to play a bigger role in meeting the challenges posed by forced migration. Today, private-sector leaders are assembling at the United Nations to make concrete commitments to help solve the problem.

In response, I have decided to earmark $500 million for investments that specifically address the needs of migrants, refugees and host communities. I will invest in startups, established companies, social-impact initiatives and businesses founded by migrants and refugees themselves. Although my main concern is to help migrants and refugees arriving in Europe, I will be looking for good investment ideas that will benefit migrants all over the world. [Continue reading…]

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Aid convoy hit in Syria as cease-fire ends

The New York Times reports: A humanitarian aid convoy was attacked in Syria on Monday after the Syrian military declared that a seven-day partial cease-fire was over and immediately began intensive bombardments in rebel-held areas of Aleppo, the divided city that has come to symbolize the ravages of the war.

The convoy attack, military declaration and bombings were the strongest signs yet of the gradual unraveling of a broader agreement between Russia and the United States aimed at restarting peace talks to end the conflict in Syria, which has killed an estimated 500,000 people and displaced millions.

Minutes after the Syrian military declared the cease-fire over around sunset, aerial attacks began pummeling insurgent-occupied neighborhoods of Aleppo, residents reported. The few remaining hospitals were back to overflowing, and rescuers struggled to find people in the dark, with the electricity out. By midnight, 34 people were reported killed.

United Nations officials were dumbfounded by the attack on the convoy of 31 trucks, which was escorted by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and was carrying food, medicine and supplies bound for rebel-held areas of western Aleppo Province. The convoy was among the first to try to deliver humanitarian aid to these areas, a relief plan permitted under the cease-fire agreement. [Continue reading…]

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UN chief blasts leaders in General Assembly for ‘feeding the war machine’ in Syria

The Associated Press reports: Taking the world stage for the last time as secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon unleashed years of pent-up anger at leaders who keep “feeding the war machine” in Syria, violate human rights and prevent aid deliveries to starving people.

The U.N. chief told presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and ministers at the opening of General Assembly’s annual ministerial meeting on Tuesday that “powerful patrons” on both sides in the more than five-year Syrian conflict “have blood on their hands.”

“Present in this hall today are representatives of governments that have ignored, facilitated, funded, participated in or even planned and carried out atrocities inflicted by all sides of the Syria conflict against Syrian civilians,” he said.

“Many groups have killed innocent civilians — none more so than the government of Syria, which continues to barrel bomb neighborhoods and systematically torture thousands of detainees,” he added. [Continue reading…]

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Assad might have hidden some of Syria’s deadliest chemical weapons

Colum Lynch reports: When Syria disclosed its long-secret chemical weapons program in December 2013, it presented international weapons inspectors with a hard-to-swallow story: One of the regime’s premier chemical weapons facilities — an underground laboratory on the outskirts of Damascus that was designed to fill Scud missiles with a lethal nerve agent — had never in fact produced Sarin.

The inspectors decided they would have to check for themselves.

In three visits to the site, known as Ha fir 1, specialists from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons started to believe they had caught Syria lying about the extent of its secret chemical-weapons development.

Samples collected at the site revealed the unmistakable presence of Sarin in the equipment used to mix the banned warfare agent and pour it into Soviet-era Scud or Tochka tactical ballistic missiles.

They also betrayed traces of precursors for another, even deadlier nerve agent, VX, that Syria did not initially acknowledge using at the site. More signatures of Sarin were detected in two mobile filling units parked aboveground at the complex. [Continue reading…]

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Syria aid deliveries stall on border

The Wall Street Journal reports: Truckloads of humanitarian supplies were waiting at the Turkish border on Wednesday while the United Nations sought to negotiate safe passage for the aid to the besieged half of the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Security guarantees were needed for the 20 trucks and their drivers before moving into Syria at the Bab al-Hawa crossing, U.N. officials said.

U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said both the government and some opposition forces were to blame for the standoff over aid deliveries to the rebel-held part of the city.

“There is always in these cases attempts to politicize humanitarian aid. So the government has been putting some conditions which I will not elaborate on and the opposition—at the receiving end in eastern Aleppo—have been putting some conditions,” he said in Brussels. He said the aid deliveries can take place only when those demands are resolved.

“The access to eastern Aleppo via the Castello Road should be unconditional and unimpeded,” he said, referring to a vital route into the city.

Armed forces from several parties in the multisided war are present along the routes to Aleppo. Despite a sharp drop in violence since a nationwide cease-fire brokered by Russia and the U.S. went into effect on Monday, no aid has yet entered Syria. [Continue reading…]

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Stopping the killing in Syria is not a question of feasibility; it’s a question of political will

Muhamed Sacirbey writes: Syria’s largest city is on the brink of starvation. Bombed from the skies and besieged on the ground, Aleppo’s 2 million residents may soon be exterminated. A little more than two decades ago, my country’s capital confronted a similar catastrophe. In the spring of 1992, regular and paramilitary units, snipers, artillery and tanks surrounded Sarajevo, Bosnia, inflicting what would become the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare.

Like in Aleppo, the situation inside Sarajevo was dire. Extremists (ostensibly seeking to deliver a “Greater Serbia”) sought to pummel, choke and starve a cosmopolitan city with a long tradition of diversity. Major access roads were cut. Utilities including water, electricity and heat were shut off. Snipers made daily life a living hell. But Sarajevo’s 400,000 residents escaped many of the horrors now awaiting Aleppo’s residents. They survived, not because then-President Slobodan Milosevic’s forces were any more humane than Bashar al-Assad’s or because Yugoslav air forces were any less capable, but because NATO opted (albeit belatedly and, too often, inadequately) to uphold its responsibility to protect Bosnian civilians.

Calls for military intervention — even for the most noble of reasons — have developed a bad reputation in the decades since NATO’s intervention in Bosnia. The catastrophe of Iraq and the disastrous post-intervention rebuilding of Libya have caused many to doubt whether military intervention could ever work. While the West’s military intervention in Bosnia didn’t solve all our problems, it was decisive in moving Bosnia and the region from war to peace — a process that still continues, albeit highly imperfectly. There is every reason to believe that similar action and determination, centered on stopping aerial bombardment of civilians, would provide similar benefits to Syria and the world. [Continue reading…]

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Aid groups suspend cooperation with UN in Syria because of Assad ‘influence’

The Guardian reports: More than 70 aid groups have suspended cooperation with the UN in Syria and have demanded an immediate and transparent investigation into its operations in the country because of concerns the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has gained “significant and substantial” influence over the relief effort.

The coalition, which includes some of Syria’s most widely known aid organisations, told the UN it intends to withdraw from the UN’s information-sharing programme in protest at the way some of its agencies are functioning within the country.

In a letter to the UN (pdf), the 73 groups made clear they could no longer tolerate the “manipulation of humanitarian relief efforts by the political interests of the Syrian government that deprives other Syrians in besieged areas from the services of those programmes”.

The groups include the Syrian American Medical Society (Sams) and the Syrian Civil Defence, or “White Helmets”, which help 6 million Syrians.

Their ultimatum is the culmination of months of frustration about the delivery of aid to besieged areas of the country, and mounting concern over the UN’s strategy – criticism the UN maintains is unfair. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. and China ratify Paris Agreement, upping pressure on other nations

Inside Climate News reports: China and the United States, the two biggest emitters of the carbon pollution that has brought global warming to a crisis point, formally ratified the Paris climate agreement on Saturday. Their move propels the ambitious global pact toward its entry into force by the end of this year.

The leaders acted the day before a meeting in Hangzhou of the G20 group of international economic powerhouses. Those nations account for almost all current emissions, and must all act swiftly to strengthen their commitments if the Paris accord is to meet its objectives.

Appearing together, President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping pledged to extend their countries’ Paris commitments to encompass “mid-century, long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies.” The treaty’s ultimate objective is to bring the whole world to zero net emissions of greenhouse gases as quickly as possible.

For the Paris agreement to take force early, 55 countries representing 55 percent of global CO2 emissions must ratify it. Together, China and the U.S. account for about 38 percent of emissions. According to the World Resources Institute, 24 other parties have already ratified, but together those parties only account for another 1 percent of emissions. The fastest way to hit the 55/55 goal would be for the European Union and a smattering of additional countries to sign on. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: With China, the US and a host of smaller countries signed up, the biggest emitter left outstanding is the EU, which negotiated the agreement as a bloc. The EU is unlikely to be able to ratify the accord any time soon, because of the mechanics of getting legal surety from its 28 member states.

There is a way around this. Nicholas Stern, chairman of the Grantham Institute on Climate Change and author of the landmark 2006 report on the economics of climate change, called on EU member states and the UK to ratify the agreement individually, through their national parliaments, to speed up the process. EU members are legally parties to the accord at a national as well as a bloc level, so if enough major countries – including the UK and Germany – were to enact the necessary processes then the accord could pass the final hurdle.

“This is a tremendous opportunity,” Stern told the Guardian. “It’s very important for the credibility of the process [of gaining global agreement on climate action through the UN] to get the treaty ratified this year. EU countries can and should ratify as soon as possible. It’s not sensible to hold back, when they could make a big difference.” [Continue reading…]

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The world may never know if Syria really destroyed all its chemical weapons

Colum Lynch reports: Twelve years ago, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government embarked on a top-secret mission to produce large batches of mustard gas, a crude World War I-era blister agent that Syria manufactured as part of a broader chemical weapons deterrent against militarily superior enemies, including Israel.

Between 2004 and 2007, Syria made some 385 metric tons of sulfur mustard, enough to fill thousands of artillery shells. But Syria has admitted to building only 15 Scud missiles capable of delivering 5 to 6 metric tons of the chemical agent, leaving a yawning gap that has left weapons inspectors questioning whether Syria may have retained a stockpile of tactical chemical munitions it has never acknowledged. That’s the conclusion of a highly confidential, 75-page report by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) reviewed exclusively by Foreign Policy.

Syria’s claims raised a number of red flags. The OPCW’s inspectors, as members of the watchdog’s Declarations Assessment Team (DAT), initially expressed skepticism over Syria’s claim that it only intended to fill Scud missiles with sulfur mustard; the blister agent “is most effectively delivered through small-caliber [tactical] munitions,” including artillery projectiles and battlefield rockets, they noted, not through medium-range missiles.

“The discrepancy between the amount of sulfur mustard produced and the capacity of its designated munitions could indicate that some munitions and/or delivery means for sulfur mustard have not been declared,” the DAT report stated.

The United States and its allies also expressed alarm over the potential for hidden Syrian stockpiles of forbidden weapons.

“Syria has engaged in a calculated campaign of intransigence and obfuscation, of deception, and of defiance,” Kenneth Ward, the U.S. representative to the OPCW, said at a meeting of the group’s executive council in July. “We … remain very concerned that [the chemical warfare agents] and associated munitions, subject to declaration and destruction, have been illicitly retained by Syria.”

The Assad regime claims it destroyed almost all the munitions. Syria said Branch 450, a secret military department responsible for filling chemical munitions, destroyed the vast majority of the stockpile — some 365 metric tons’ worth of sulfur mustard — in May 2012, about two months before Syria publicly acknowledged for the first time the existence of its chemical weapons program. The remaining 20 metric tons were disposed of under U.N. supervision after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov brokered a deal in September 2013 to eliminate the country’s remaining chemical weapons. [Continue reading…]

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UN says 10,000 killed in Yemen war, far more than other estimates

Reuters reports: At least 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen’s 18-month-old civil war, the United Nations on Tuesday, approaching double the estimates of more than 6,000 cited by officials and aid workers for much of 2016.

The war pits the Iran-allied Houthi group and supporters of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh against President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who is supported by an alliance of Arab states led by Saudi Arabia.

The new toll is based on official information from medical facilities in Yemen, U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator Jamie McGoldrick told a news conference in the capital Sanaa. It might rise as some areas had no medical facilities, and people were often buried without official records.

The United Nations human rights office said last week that 3,799 civilians have been killed in the conflict, with air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition responsible for some 60 percent of deaths. [Continue reading…]

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UN pays tens of millions to Assad regime under Syria aid programme

The Guardian reports: The UN has awarded contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to people closely associated with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, as part of an aid programme that critics fear is increasingly at the whim of the government in Damascus, a Guardian investigation has found.

Businessmen whose companies are under US and EU sanctions have been paid substantial sums by the UN mission, as have government departments and charities – including one set up by the president’s wife, Asma al-Assad, and another by his closest associate, Rami Makhlouf.

The UN says it can only work with a small number of partners approved by President Assad and that it does all it can to ensure the money is spent properly.

“Of paramount importance is reaching as many vulnerable civilians as possible,” a spokesman said. “Our choices in Syria are limited by a highly insecure context where finding companies and partners who operate in besieged and hard to reach areas is extremely challenging.”

However, critics believe the UN mission is in danger of being compromised.

They believe aid is being prioritised in government-held areas and argue UN money is effectively helping to prop up a regime responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. [Continue reading…]

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UN’s $4bn aid effort in Syria is morally bankrupt

Reinoud Leenders writes: When confronted with criticism of their failure to address Syria’s humanitarian catastrophe, UN officials routinely blame a lack of resources. As Stephen O’Brien, the undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, put it, the UN system is broke, not broken.

Yet UN aid agencies, since stepping up operations in Syria in 2012, have handed lucrative procurement contracts to regime cronies who are known to have bankrolled the very repression and brutality that helped cause the crisis in the first place.

The revelation is as perverse as it is unsurprising, and points to the moral bankruptcy of the UN’s $4bn (£3bn) Syria aid effort to date. It is perverse that UN agencies, which are mandated to reach out to the most vulnerable in Syria’s vicious and protracted civil war, are throwing a lifeline to a regime that has no qualms about burning the entire country just to stay in power.

The UN may not be legally bound to the sanctions imposed on Syrian regime incumbents by the EU or US; it may even argue that such unilateral sanctions are illegal. Yet when several Syrian suppliers of humanitarian goods and services are blacklisted for “aiding the regime’s repression” or for “being close to key figures of the Syrian regime”, UN procurement officials must have known whom they were dealing with. Genuine Syrian businessmen could have told them that some of the UN’s key business partners were, in fact, the regime. [Continue reading…]

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Airstrike in east Aleppo apparently targets funeral procession

The Washington Post reports: Syrian warplanes appeared to target a funeral Saturday morning in east Aleppo, killing dozens of civilians who had come to mourn the deaths of at least 13 people days earlier.

The attack on Bab al-Nairab, a Syrian suburb named after one of the city’s ancient gates, took place in waves, activists said. The first barrel bomb hit a funeral procession, the second landed as rescue workers arrived. Doctors said the preliminary death count was 25.

Aleppo is one of the Syrian war’s most important battlegrounds, divided by government forces in the west and armed opposition groups in the east. According to monitoring groups, more than 300 civilians have been killed in fighting there this month.

The United Nations’ special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has urged warring parties to state by Sunday whether they will commit to a 48-hour humanitarian cease-fire across the city. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. plans to ‘corner’ Russia on Syria’s chemical weapons

Christopher Dickey and Noah Shachtman report: Syria continues to develop chemical weapons it is supposed to have destroyed, and to use chlorine gas it agreed not to use on the battlefield. This, according to reports from United Nations agencies that have been leaked in recent days by Obama administration officials and were confirmed in part by public statements from U.S. officials on Wednesday and Thursday.

“It is now impossible to deny that the Syrian regime has repeatedly used industrial chlorine as a weapon against its own people,” said a statement from U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Ned Price. (Chlorine was the first gas used in the trenches of World War I. When it mixes with the moisture in human eyes and lungs, it turns to acid with potentially fatal effects.)

Also very disturbing is the conclusion in the same report that the so-called Islamic State has used sulfur mustard gas, which causes skin and lungs to blister painfully, or fatally.

These leaks and statements are part of an administration effort to put pressure on President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian backers before an Aug. 30 meeting by the U.N. Security Council to look at the issue of chemical weapons in Syria, a U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast.

Why now? According to this official, the answer goes back to 2014, when the Assad regime was accused of repeated chlorine attacks, and the world shrugged its shoulders.

“We weren’t getting enough political oomph when the chlorine attacks first came to light. So we figured the best option was to work through the slow UN process, get the Russians to a place where they’re cornered diplomatically,” the intelligence official said.

Plus, the official added, finger pointing by the United States alone wouldn’t be nearly as effective as collective action.

“You know the way the Russians treat anything Syria-related,” the official said. “If we bring it forward, the Russians would reject it out of hand. So we helped OPCW [the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons] uncover it on its own.”

In fact, the timing is politically problematic for President Barack Obama, and potentially for his favored successor, Hillary Clinton, since she is so closely identified with his administration.

We are looking at the third anniversary of Obama’s Great Syria Failure, as many of his critics see it: the debacle in which he drew a red line against the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons, and the regime stepped right across it, killing more than a 1,000 men, women, and children with sarin nerve gas on Aug. 21, 2013, in a Damascus suburb called Ghouta. [Continue reading…]

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Syria used chlorine in bombs against civilians, UN report says

The New York Times reports: Syrian military helicopters dropped bombs containing chlorine on civilians in at least two attacks over the past two years, a special joint investigation of the United Nations and an international chemical weapons monitor said on Wednesday in a confidential report.

The report also found that militants of the Islamic State in Syria had been responsible for an attack last year using poisonous sulfur mustard, which, like chlorine, is banned as a weapon under an international treaty.

The 95-page report, based on a yearlong investigation, represents the first time the United Nations has blamed specific antagonists in the Syrian conflict for the use of chemical weapons, which is a war crime. Previous inquiries have determined that chemical weapons were used, but did not specify by whom.

A panel of investigators from the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons submitted the report on Wednesday to members of the United Nations Security Council. It was not made public, but a copy was viewed by The New York Times. [Continue reading…]

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