LONDON (TIP): A leaked draft of a highly critical internal United Nations report says the global body failed in its mandate to protect civilians in the last months of Sri Lanka‘s bloody civil war, the BBC reported on Tuesday. “Events in Sri Lanka mark a grave failure of the UN,” the BBC’s website quoted the report as saying. The government and Tamil rebels are accused of war crimes in the brutal conflict, which ended in May 2009. The UN’s probe into its own conduct during the last months of the conflict says the body should in future “be able to meet a much higher standard in fulfilling its protection and humanitarian responsibilities” . It points to a “systemic failure,” BBC said.The panel questions decisions such as the withdrawal of UN staff from the war zone in September 2008 after Lanka warned it could no longer guarantee their safety.