Battles in Syria this year have been marked by a series of war crimes including the use of prohibited weapons such as Iran-made rockets designed to be filled with chlorine, U.N. investigators said on Wednesday.
Syrian government forces fired chlorine, a banned chemical weapon, on a rebel-held Damascus suburb and on Idlib province this year, in attacks that constitute war crimes, a newly published U.N. report said.
The three incidents bring to 39 the number of chemical attacks which the Commission of Inquiry on Syria has documented since 2013, including 33 attributed to the government, a U.N. official said.
The perpetrators of the remaining six have not been sufficiently identified.
Weaponizing chlorine is prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention, ratified by Syria, and under customary international humanitarian law, the investigators said in their latest report.
More than a million civilians were displaced in six major battles across Syria during the first six months of the year, the report said.
The United Nations fears a major imminent assault by Syrian and Russian forces against the last rebel-held stronghold of Idlib and appealed to the actors to respect the rights of the 3 million people living there, including 1 million children.
"Most battles documented in the report were marked by a series of war crimes which we have detailed extensively, mainly launching discriminate attacks, deliberate attack on protected objects, using prohibited weapons, forced displacing including by armed groups and terrorist entities," Chairman of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria Paulo Pinheiro said.
Commission member Hanny Megally noted that the panel has "identified rockets that were manufactured in Iran that have been adapted in Syria, and have been adapted in a way that they could be used, it seems, to then be filled up with chlorine, and used in some of these chlorine attacks. So we mention it as one incident where we've seen that happen, and where we've traced back the origins of those canisters to rockets that have been supplied by Iran.
"If Idlib goes the same way as we have seen in other places, then it's a complete failure of the international system. It's a complete failure of many of us to be able to prevent what we've seen happening time and again," he warned.
France's foreign minister warned on Wednesday that the indiscriminate bombing of the Idlib region by Russian, Syrian and Iranian forces could amount to war crimes.
"The hypothesis of war crimes cannot be excluded once one begins to indiscriminately bomb civilian populations and hospitals," Jean-Yves Le Drian said.
It is not the first time France has warned the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, Russia or Iran that their aggression could amount to war crimes.
In 2016, the government of former president Francois Hollande said it was working to find a way for the International Criminal Court's prosecutor to launch an investigation into war crimes that it believed had been committed by Syrian and Russian forces in eastern Aleppo.
Little came from the French initiative as the court has no jurisdiction for crimes in Syria since Damascus has not signed up to the Rome treaty establishing the ICC.
The ICC could investigate, however, through a U.N. Security Council referral. But the council has been deadlocked over Syria for years. Moscow vetoed a French resolution in May 2014 to refer the situation in Syria to the ICC.
"The situation is extremely serious. We are on the eve of a considerable humanitarian and security catastrophe," Le Drian said.
He said that efforts should be made immediately to prepare for a mass humanitarian crisis should thousands of people be displaced by the fighting.
Top German officials on Wednesday called for concerted global efforts to prevent chemical weapons being used in Syria, as conservative chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany could not simply "look away" if such attacks took place.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said diplomacy was the top priority to prevent the use of chemical weapons in Syria, but Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said a "credible deterrent" was also needed.
The German government said it was in talks with the United States and other allies about possible participation in military intervention in the event of such an attack in Idlid.
"The international community, including us, must do everything to prevent chemical weapons being used," von der Leyen, a conservative, told the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament.
"We can't act today as if it doesn't affect us."
Maas said that Germany would decide autonomously whether to participate in any military action in line with its constitution and international law, and any action would be discussed with lawmakers.
But Merkel told the Bundestag on Wednesday that Germany could not just reject military intervention out of hand, saying, "It cannot be the German position to simply say 'No,' no matter what happens in the world."
Participation in any airstrikes in Syria would put Germany on a collision course with Russia, Assad's main backer.
