France accuses the Assad regime of 'war crimes' in Aleppo airstrikes

French United Nations Ambassador Francois Delattre said Sunday the barrage of Syrian government airstrikes that have pounded rebel-held areas of Aleppo since Friday amount to "war crimes" by the Bashar al-Assad regime and cannot be left unpunished.

The "Security Council simply cannot accept such war crimes — yes, war crimes — to repeat again," Delattre argued, proposing "an immediate humanitarian truce in Aleppo and the Ghouta [a region of Syria near Damascus], 20 years after the siege of Sarajevo."

Since Friday, more than 200 strikes have hit Aleppo, killing at least 100 people and leaving 2 million civilians without running water. The U.N. Security Council convened at 11 a.m. Eastern time Sunday to discuss the situation. Complicating matters, the council includes Russia, which is allied with the Assad regime.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Update 1:06 p.m.: British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday also said "war crimes" are occurring in Syria and suggested Russia is responsible because of its alliance with Damascus. American U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power took a slightly more measured approach, avoiding the war crimes label but terming Moscow's actions in Syria "barbarism, not counter-terrorism" and calling the conditions in Aleppo "apocalyptic."

A Russian spokeswoman immediately rejected Johnson's remarks. "The foreign minister of Great Britain Boris Johnson said in a broadcast of the BBC that Russia is guilty of protracting civil war in Syria and, possibly, of committing war crimes in the form of air attacks on convoys with humanitarian aid," Maria Zakharova said on Facebook Sunday. "All this is right except for two words: Instead of 'Russia' it needs to be 'Great Britain' and instead of 'Syria,' 'Iraq.'"