MOSCOW: Russia’s foreign minister on Thursday said he was “skeptical” about a UN report accusing the Syrian regime of committing crimes against humanity during the siege of Eastern Ghouta.
The report published Wednesday said forces loyal to the government had deliberately starved civilians during the siege between February and April, among other crimes.
“We are in principle very skeptical toward the methods of this sort of work, whether it comes to war crimes or the use of chemical weapons,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a press conference in Moscow with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
When questioned by journalists, Lavrov confirmed he had not seen the report.
He said it was “based on data obtained through social networks, video that was filmed by witnesses,” rather than being put together on the ground.
The five-year siege, on the outskirts of the capital, ended in April when Damascus regained control of the rebel enclave.
As pro-government forces dramatically escalated their campaign to recapture the besieged enclave, they used tactics that were “largely unlawful in nature,” the UN-commissioned report said.
The tactics, it said, “aimed at punishing the inhabitants of eastern Ghouta and forcing the population, collectively, to surrender or starve.”
Russia has been involved in Syria’s civil war since September 2015. Its military support of the regime changed the course of the war, allowing government troops to retake more than half the country from rebels and the Daesh group.
More than 350,000 people have been killed in Syria’s war since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Russia ‘skeptical’ over UN Syrian crimes against humanity report
Russia ‘skeptical’ over UN Syrian crimes against humanity report
Video shows armed men beating a Palestinian in West Bank
- The previous incident was in September and cost the business more than $600,000 as offices and facilities were damaged, he said
TEL AVIV: Dozens of masked men armed with sticks beat and injured a Palestinian in the Israeli-occupied West Bank when they attacked a plant nursery, according to people who saw the attack and video footage obtained by The Associated Press.
Video filmed by security cameras shows men dressed mostly in black, faces covered, with several hitting and kicking a man on the ground.
Two witnesses who are members of the family that owns the facility said Israeli settlers beat 67-year-old Basim Saleh Yassin as he was trying to flee the German-Palestinian-run nursery in the northern West Bank village of Deir Sharaf. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
BACKGROUND
The attack is the latest in rising Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, where assaults increased during the Palestinian olive harvest in October and have continued.
Workers fled when they saw the settlers coming on Thursday but Yassin is deaf and couldn’t hear the warnings to leave, one family member said.
The witnesses said Yassin was in the hospital with broken bones in his hand and other injuries to his face, chest and back. Four cars at the nursery were burned.
The attack is the latest in rising Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, where assaults increased during the Palestinian olive harvest in October and have continued.
Israeli authorities have done little beyond issuing occasional condemnations of the violence.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the perpetrators “a handful of extremists” and urged law enforcement to pursue them for “the attempt to take the law into their own hands.”
But rights groups and Palestinians say the problem is far greater than a few bad actors, and attacks have become a daily phenomenon across the territory.
Israel’s army said it dispatched soldiers to the Shavei Shomron junction — close to the area of Thursday’s attack — following reports of dozens of masked Israelis vandalizing property.
The army said it apprehended three suspects who were taken to police for questioning. It said security forces condemn violence of any kind.
According to one of the family members who own the nursery, it was the third time in a year that the facility was attacked.
The previous incident was in September and cost the business more than $600,000 as offices and facilities were damaged, he said.
In the video of Thursday’s attack, Yassin runs from a group of masked people before falling to the ground.
One man kicks him and another hits him twice with what appears to be a stick. Yassin stays on his knees as he’s struck again and then places his hands on the ground.
As the men are leaving, one kicks him in the head while others strike him again until he’s seen lying on the pavement.
