UN On Syria: Major Powers Feeding 'Military Escalation

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Posted: Monday, February 22, 2016 4:09 pm | Updated: 4:31 pm, Mon Feb 22, 2016.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — War crimes are "rampant" in Syria, and the conflict has become "a multisided proxy war steered from abroad by an intricate network of alliances," U.N. investigators said in a new report Monday.

In a swipe at the U.S., Russia and their allies, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria said the international powers and regional countries ostensibly pushing for a peaceful solution are the same nations that "continue to feed the military escalation."

The new report came as U.S. officials said the U.S. and Russia had agreed on a new "cessation of hostilities" in Syria that will take effect on Saturday. A similar cessation announced Feb. 11 and set to begin last week did not take place, while Russian airstrikes continued to support a Syrian government offensive in the northern province of Aleppo.

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, chair of the commission established by the U.N. Human Rights Council, enthusiastically welcomed efforts launched in Vienna and Munich to find a political solution to the conflict, which will enter its sixth year in March with over 250,000 people killed.

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