WASHINGTON must investigate US air strikes in Syria that killed civilians, a United Nations war crimes panel told a press conference on Wednesday.

Investigators called for their findings to be made public and for those responsible for violations to be held to account.

The UN commission of inquiry made “a recommendation to the United States and all parties to conduct credible, independent and impartial investigations into incidents entailing civilian casualties in which their forces are implicated.”

The independent body also called for Western sanctions against Syria to be eased to mitigate their impact on civilians, who are suffering shortages of basic goods and rising inflation.

It follows a similar call last August, by a group of independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, for an end to the punitive US restrictions placed on Syria under the Caesar Act.

UN special rapporteur Alena Douhan said at the time that the people of countries targeted by US sanctions, including Syria, “cannot get essential services like electricity, housing, water, gas and fuel, let alone medicine and food.”

US forces have been accused of a litany of war crimes in Syria since 2014, when Washington’s forces begun operations in the country as part of an anti-Isis coalition.

But civilian areas were flattened by air strikes supposedly targeting jihadists, leading Russia to draw comparisons with the Allied bombing of the German city of Dresden during World War II.

Last November, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin was forced to order a review into a 2019 attack on the Syrian town of Baghuz in which at least 64 women and children were killed.

It will be led by the head of the US Army Forces Command, General Michael Garrett.

In January, Syrian military prosecution service announced that it has launched an investigation into suspected US crimes, including the training of jihadist militias and their use to carry out acts of terror.

“The military prosecution has come up with sufficient and incontrovertible evidence that American forces assert fairly direct control over Daesh [Isis] members as well as their terrorist activities across Syria, using its illegal base in al-Tanf [a region in southern Syria],” spokesman Ahmad Touzan said at the time.

Washington denies accusations that it is working with jihadist groups in Syria. However, the CIA’s covert Operation Timber Sycamore saw some $1 billion (roughly £760 million) funnelled to a myriad of Islamist groups between 2013 and 2017 as the US sought to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad’s government.