UN: Both sides committed war crimes in Syria's Aleppo

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Nearly 400,000 people have been killed since the war began

Both sides in last year's battle for Syria's Aleppo city committed war crimes, including a "deliberate" bombing of a humanitarian convoy by the Syrian government, according to a new United Nations investigation.

The UN Commission of Inquiry's report released on Wednesday said Syrian government and allied Russian forces "pervasively used" unguided munitions to bomb densely po[CENSORED]ted areas in rebel-held eastern Aleppo between July and its fall on December 22, amounting to the war crime of indiscriminate attacks.

hese included aerial bombs, air-to-surface rockets, cluster munitions, incendiary bombs, barrel bombs, and weapons delivering toxic industrial chemicals.

But investigators could not say whether both Syrian and Russian forces had used them in Aleppo or only one had. Neither did they attribute any specific war crime investigated to Russian forces.

"Throughout the period under review, the skies over Aleppo city and its environs were jointly controlled by Syrian and Russian air forces ... (They) use predominantly the same aircraft and weapons, thus rendering attribution impossible in many cases," the report said.

Aleppo, once Syria's largest city and former commercial hub, had been divided into rebel and government parts since 2012.

The recapture of its eastern sector in late December by government forces was the biggest blow to Syria's rebel movement since fighting started in March 2011.

Syrian helicopters unleashed toxic chlorine bombs "throughout 2016" on Aleppo, a banned weapon that caused hundreds of civilian casualties there, the report said.

At least 5,000 pro-government forces also encircled eastern Aleppo in a "surrender or starve" tactic, it said.

In a major new finding, the investigators also accused the Syrian government of a "meticulously planned and ruthlessly carried out" air strike on a UN and Syrian Red Crescent convoy at Orum al-Kubra, in rural western Aleppo on September 19 which killed 14 aid workers.

President Bashar al-Assad's government has fiercely denied responsibility for the convoy's bombardment and a separate UN probe in December said it was impossible to establish blame.