Summary executions, torture, hostage-taking and indiscriminate shelling of civilian homes:  All the work of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, right?  Well, yeah.  But the opposition forces trying to topple Assad are committing very similar war crimes on similar scales.

“Government and pro-government forces have continued to conduct widespread attacks on the civilian population, committing murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearance as crimes against humanity,” a new report to the Geneva-based rights United Nations Human Rights Council said.

It is based on the accounts of 258 survivors of and refugees from the violence in Syria.  The report speaks of eight of nine massacres are attributed to government forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad.  But nine other massacres were also investigated.  And investigators found that rebel groups, swelling with an influx of foreign jihadists, committed atrocities on civilians this year.

The Al Qaeda-aligned Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as singled out as foreign militants that have developed their own strongholds in northern Syria.