UN Report: Syrian military deliberately bombed Idlib school

BEIRUT — A UN investigative commission says Tuesday it believes government forces deliberately bombed a school complex in the country’s northern countryside in October, killing 21 children, in a scathing report on crimes committed over the last seven months of the Syrian war.

The UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria says government forces and their allies had shown a “complete disregard for civilian life and international law” through continued use of cluster munitions, incendiary weapons and chlorine gas as weapons of war.

It also fingers an al-Qaeda-aligned insurgent group fighting on the side of Syria’s rebels and a US-backed Kurdish group for conscripting adolescents for combat.

The commission says the Oct. 26 attack on the Haas village school complex in the rebel-held province of Idlib constituted a war crime. It says the Syrian air force is the only one known to operate the jets identified in the attack, which was widely reported at the time.

— AP