The spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville, made a series of remarks on the situation in Northern and Eastern Syria.

Colville said: "We have begun receiving reports of civilian casualties – as of last night we had reports of seven civilians, including two women and a boy who had been killed with another boy injured, during the first two days of the Turkish operation."

Colville added: "We have received disturbing reports that airstrikes and ground-based attacks by Turkish army and affiliated armed groups have affected key civilian infrastructure and objects such as water pumping stations, dams, power stations, and oil fields. It is likely that thousands of people will be deprived of adequate access to clean water in the area supplied by the station." 

Colville also underlined that there are news that areas in northern Syria, "such as Afrin, al-Bab, Jarablus, and Azaz that were already under the control of Turkish forces and/or affiliated armed groups, are continuing to face lawlessness and rampant criminality and violence.

We have had specific reports of intimidation, ill-treatment, killing, kidnapping, looting and seizure of civilians’ houses by the Turkish-backed armed groups in these areas, with civilians reportedly seized by members of these groups from their homes or at checkpoints, accused of affiliation with specific Kurdish armed or political groups. The fate and whereabouts of many of those civilians remain unknown." 

The spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stressed that; "Military operations - he said - must be conducted in accordance with international humanitarian law, in particular the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution."