United Nations investigators say they have documented an increasing number of attacks against civilians by both the Syrian government and rebels in the 18-month conflict between President Bashar al-Assad's forces and his opponents.
Paulo Pinheiro, the Brazilian chairman leading a U.N. commission of inquiry, told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva Monday that “egregious violations” happen so often that his team has not been able to investigate them all.
The panel's report, completed last month, said while both government and anti-government forces committed war crimes, the abuses by opposition forces – while serious – did not reach the “gravity, frequency and scale” of those carried out by pro-government sides.
The independent U.N. team also confirmed that an increasing number of “foreign elements,” including Islamist militants, are now operating in Syria – the first report to say that outsiders have joined a war spiraling out of control.
The panel said some of these forces are joining armed anti-government groups while others are operating on their own. Pinheiro said the presence of such jihadist militants tends to push rebels opposed to Mr. Assad toward more radical positions.
Rebels deny that foreigners had any role starting the revolt, saying Syrians were seeking increased freedom from the regime. But as the conflict dragged on, some rebels have acknowledged the presence of small numbers of foreigners among their ranks.
Syria's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Faysal Khabbaz Hamoui, criticized the report. He said members of the international community are working to make the crisis in Syria worse.
A spokesman for the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told VOA he had read the report but could not comment.
The U.N. panel accused government forces and pro-regime militiamen of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, summary executions, torture, arbitrary arrests, sexual violence and abuse of children. It also accused anti-government armed groups of war crimes including murder, extrajudicial execution and torture.
In a separate report Monday, Human Rights Watch said it has documented more than a dozen extrajudicial and summary executions by opposition forces.
The U.N.'s Pinheiro said food, water and medical supplies have run short in areas subjected to Syrian government assaults and that investigators had received “numerous accounts…of civilians barely managing to survive.”
In a sign of the conflict's regional perils, Lebanese security officials said the Syrian Air Force raided an area near the Syrian-Lebanese border Monday, but there were no reports of casualties.
Missiles from two Syrian warplanes, followed by helicopter fire, hit an area just inside Lebanese territory where opposition rebels had fled.
Also Monday, Lebanon's President Michel Suleiman asked Iran for an official explanation of remarks attributed to a senior Iranian commander that Tehran's powerful Revolutionary Guard has military advisers in Lebanon and Syria.
Separately, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said he is “hopeful” about a meeting of a four-nation dialogue group on Syria later Monday in Cairo with his counterparts from Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Inside Syria, activists reported that government troops shelled rebel-held areas around the country including the northern city of Aleppo and the Damascus neighborhood of Hajar Aswad.
The United Nations says more than 20,000 people have been killed in the conflict, 1.2 million are uprooted within Syria and more than 250,000 have fled abroad.
