Syria denies that air assault targeted camps

The Syrian military denied Friday it conducted airstrikes on a refugee camp near the Turkish border that killed at least 28 people, but a top U.N. official said initial reports suggested a government plane was responsible for the 'murderous attacks.”

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein said Thursday's attacks almost certainly were a war crime. France called them a 'revolting and unacceptable act that could amount to a war crime or crime against humanity.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said women and children were among those killed in the attack on the camp near Sarmada, which sheltered people fleeing the five-year civil war. The toll could rise because so many were seriously wounded, the monitoring group said.

In a statement, Syria's military said: 'There is no truth to reports ... about the Syrian air force targeting a camp for the displaced in the Idlib countryside.”

Syrian ally Russia said none of its aircraft flew over the camp. It said militants from the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front might have deliberately or accidentally fired on it.

U.N. rights chief Zeid said: 'Given these tent settlements have been in these locations for several weeks, and can be clearly viewed from the air, it is extremely unlikely that these murderous attacks were an accident.”

He said investigators would 'leave no stone unturned in their efforts to research and record evidence of what appears to be a particularly despicable and calculated crime against an extremely vulnerable group of people.”