Image copyright Reuters Image caption President Bashar al-Assad"s forces have regained control of Aleppo Britain"s policy on Syria has been “wrong every step of the way”, a former UK ambassador to the country has said.
Peter Ford said the UK had made matters worse by not putting troops on the ground and instead encouraging rebel groups to mount a doomed campaign.
The situation had led to hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, which could have been foreseen, he added.
The Foreign Office said removing the Assad regime was the only way to end the suffering of the Syrian people.
Mr Ford, who was the ambassador in Damascus from 2003 to 2006, said the UK should have put forces on to the battlefield or refrained from encouraging the launch of the opposition campaign.
In 2013, possible military action against the Assad regime in Syria to deter the use of chemical weapons was rejected by MPs,
Two years later, the UK launched air strikes targeting so-called Islamic State in Syr..
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