Report: War crimes committed by almost all sides in Syria

Investigators for the UN-backed Human Rights Council said on Monday that they had found evidence of war crimes in Syria committed by nearly all sides in the conflict during the second half of last year and into January.

The investigators turned up war crimes by Russian forces, Syrian government troops, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria and Turkey-backed Syrian fighters.

The Commission of Inquiry for Syria has been tracking and chronicling human rights abuses and violations since shortly after Syria's war began in 2011. They revealed the findings in their 19th regular report on Monday, this time covering July 11 last year until January 10.

That period was marked by several key developments in the war.

Starting in early December, a Russia-backed Syrian government offensive began pushing into Syria's last rebel stronghold in the northwestern Idlib province, which is dominated by al-Qaeda-linked militants.

The offensive led to a surge of nearly a million Syrian civilians fleeing the fighting amid harsh winter weather. It's the single largest wave of displacement in Syria's nine-year civil war.

The commission's members, headed by Brazilian lawyer Paulo Pinheiro, said Syrian women, children and other civilians face unprecedented level of suffering and pain."