UN officials are accusing the Syrian government of new “war crimes” today related to the two month water shortage in the capital city of Damascus, saying the water supplies were cut for weeks because Syrian jets had struck the water supply infrastructure in the course of bombing rebels in the area.
The UN insisted this amounted to a war crime, because the loss of water supplies to 5.5 million people was “grossly disproportionate” to the military advantage of ousting the rebels from the area.
The Syrian government had initially accused the rebels of poisoning the water supplies and then said it was the rebels that damaged the infrastructure. While the UN confirmed that the damage was from airstrikes, they did not say if the poisoning happened or not.
Other UN reports also heavily blamed the Syrian government for most incidents in the country, though in cases like the allegation of cluster munition use, they conceded they hadn’t actually conclusively proven the planes dropping the munition were Syrian military planes.
