Displaying items by tag: Michelle Bachelet

The UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet says that those responsible for airstrikes targeting Syrian civilians could be charged with war crimes, calling it ‘a failure of leadership by the world's most powerful nations’. Since late April 400,000 have been displaced and over 730 civilians killed by Syrian and Russian attacks on militant-held Idlib where three million still live. The airstrikes on schools, hospitals, markets and bakeries killed over 103 civilians in just ten days, including 26 schoolchildren killed in their classroom seats. Ms Bachelet added, ‘These are civilian objects, and it seems highly unlikely, given the persistent pattern of such attacks, that they are all being hit by accident. There is an international indifference to the rising civilian death toll caused by a succession of airstrikes.` Both the Syrians and Russians deny targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure.