Condemnation mounted Friday over deadly air strikes on a camp for displaced people in northern Syria, while a fragile ceasefire held in the battleground city of Aleppo.
Women and children were reported to be among the 28 civilians killed in Thursday’s raids near the Turkish border, which left 50 others wounded.
The strikes in Idlib province came as a 48-hour ceasefire took hold in Aleppo city to the east.
The European Union has called the bombardment “unacceptable”.
UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said the camp’s tents could clearly be seen from the air so it was “extremely unlikely” to have been an accident.
“It is far more likely they were deliberate and amount to a war crime,” he added.
France is expressing the “strongest condemnation” of the air strikes on camps for displaced people in Syria that left at least 28 people dead, including women and children.
A statement from the Foreign Affairs Ministry on Friday said the bombings “could be constitutive of a war crime and a crime against humanity” and that France wants an independent investigation into this “odious act.”
The statement attributed the bombings to the Syrian government and insisted those who carried out the “revolting and unacceptable” attacks must be brought to justice.
Air strike on camp for displaced
France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault will meet on Monday in Paris with Riad Hijab, the head of the Western-backed Syrian opposition’s High Negotiations Committee.
“There’s absolutely no justification for attacks on civilians in Syria, but especially on what appears to have been a refugee camp,” said State Department spokesman Mark Toner.
That truce entered its second day on Friday, allowing residents some respite from two weeks of fighting that killed more than 280 civilians, even as fighting raged to the south of the city.
The halt in fighting is part of international efforts to revive a landmark February ceasefire and galvanise peace talks to end a five-year war that has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions.
– Charred bodies –
A video posted online by the civil defence showed emergency workers dragging a fire hose amid plumes of smoke rising from destroyed tents, as their colleagues covered the charred remains of victims with blankets and carried them away.
The video also showed dismembered bodies covered in blood and dirt, at least one of them a child.
Thousands of civilians have fled fighting in the northern province of Aleppo to camps along the border with Turkey, which refuses to let them cross the frontier.
Source: AFP, 6 May 2016
