The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria said on Wednesday in its report that it had confirmed at least eight massacres perpetrated in Syria by President Bashar Assad's regime and his supporters as well as one by rebels over the past year and a half.
The UN commission released an updated report on its work since 2011 to mid-July, stopping short of what the United States says was an August 21 chemical weapons attack on the East Ghouta suburbs of the Syrian capital of Damascus which killed hundreds of civilians.
While the debate over what kind of international action, if any, should be taken assumed new urgency following the use of chemical weapons on August 21, the Commission's written statement on its latest report said, "The conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic has taken a dangerous turn. The majority of casualties result from unlawful attacks using conventional weapons."
Citing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's latest stataments, the Commission noted that "there is a need for accountability, both to bring to justice those who used them – should Dr. Sellström confirm their use – and to deter anyone else from using these abhorrent methods of warfare."
"With fighting raging between Assad regime forces, pro-Assad forces, anti-government armed groups and Kurdish armed groups, it is civilians who continue to pay the price for the failure to negotiate an end to this conflict," argued the Commission.
The report indicated that tens of thousands of lives have been lost while over six million Syrians have fled their homes, each with a story of devastation and loss.
The UN Commission pointed out that the failure to bring about a political settlement had not only to the deepening of the conflict's intransigence but also to its widening, expanding to new actors and to new, previously unimaginable crimes.
Investigating violations of international law committed by all parties to the conflict, the Commission stressed that any response must be founded upon the protection of civilians.
"The nature of the war raging in Syria is such that the number of violations by all sides goes hand in hand with the intensity of the conflict itself. With the spectre of international military involvement, Syria – and the region – face further conflagration, leading to increased civilian suffering," it further said.
Saying that it continued to carry out its specific mandate to investigate all massacres, the UN commission underlined that the intentional mass killing and the identity of its perpetrator had been confirmed to the commission’s evidentiary standards.
The report stressed the urgent need for a cessation of hostilities and a return to negotiations, which would lead to a political settlement, claiming that "To elect military action in Syria will not only intensify the suffering inside the country but will also serve to keep such a settlement beyond our collective reach."
Calling Syria a battlefield where "massacres are perpetrated with impunity," the UN commission probing human rights abuses in Syria further said it was probing nine more suspected mass killings.
Wednesday's updated report also underlined that an untold number of Syrians have disappeared during the 2.5-year Syrian civil war.
As the report argued, the Syrian regime and pro-regime forces have continued to conduct widespread attacks on the civilian population, committing murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearance as crimes against humanity. "They have laid siege to neighbourhoods and subjected them to indiscriminate shelling. Government forces have committed gross violations of human rights and the war crimes of torture, hostage-taking, murder, execution without due process, rape, attacking protected objects and pillage."
The report also argued that anti-government armed groups also committed war crimes, including murder, execution without due process, torture, hostage-taking and attacking protected objects while anti-government and Kurdish armed groups have recruited and used child soldiers in hostilities.
The Commission said in its report that the perpetrators of these violations and crimes, on all sides, acted in defiance of international law, not fearing accountability, and urged that referral to justice is imperative.
"There is no military solution to this conflict. Those who supply arms create but an illusion of victory. A political solution founded upon tenets of the Geneva communiqué is the only path to peace," the report concluded.
The latest report of the UN Commission covered investigations conducted from May 1 to July 15, 2013. Its findings were based on 258 interviews and other collected evidence.
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