War crimes

United Nations investigators say that both Damascus and ISIS have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity:

Violence has bled over the borders of the Syrian Arab republic, with extremism fuelling the conflict’s heightened brutality.

A 45-page report released in Geneva says that the government has dropped barrel bombs on civilian areas, including some believed to contain chlorine, while deaths in custody are rising and analysis of photographs taken in government detention centres reinforces ‘longstanding findings of systematic torture and deaths of detainees,’ including fighting-age men allegedly arrested during forced truces. It says ISIS has used amputations, public execution-style killings and whippings to instill terror in areas under its control, as well as ‘acts tantamount to enforced disappearance and forced displacement as part of attacks on the civilian population in Aleppo and Raqqa provinces.’