GENEVA // A UN-appointed commission is collecting evidence on 20 massacres in Syria, a reflection of the civil war's growing brutality, the panel's chairman said yesterday.
The massacres include three in the central city of Homs since December, commission chair Paulo Sergio Pinheiro said.
"There are no more enclaves of stability in Syria today, and the civilian space is almost completely eroded," Mr Pinheiro told reporters after giving an update on Syria to the UN's top human rights body.
Mr Pinheiro and three other members of the expert commission, which began its work in August 2011 after being appointed by the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council, described Syria as a "marketplace of war," opening the door to rampant corruption and extortion.
Another of the most alarming features, it added, has been the use of medical care as "a tactic of war," with medical personnel and hospitals deliberately targeted and medical access denied on political and sectarian grounds.
Commission member Vitit Muntarbhorn said both sides are committing war crimes, but it appears that "government authorities have been involved more in regard to crimes against humanity."
The panel's report to the Geneva-based council, covering January 15 to March 3, said Syria appears condemned to "an unimaginably bleak future" as government forces target civilians in bakery lines and funeral processions, and while anti-government rebels continue to use protected objects, such as mosques, as bases or for weapons storage.
In Homs yesterday, Syrian jets bombed rebel forces attempting to recapture a keenly contested district, as mortar shells slammed into a Damascus neighbourhood killing at least three people. Rebels launched a surprise assault on Homs's Baba Amr at dawn on Sunday, hoping to take back the devastated neighbourhood which they lost to Assad's forces last year.
The regime responded with air strikes and shelling, and sent reinforcements to the city which was "completely sealed," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Fighting raged through the night, with more air strikes yesterday morning. Meanwhile, the German weekly Der Spiegel, quoting what it said were participants and organisers, claimed that Americans are training Syrian anti-government fighters in Jordan.
Der Spiegel said it was not clear whether the Americans worked for private firms or were from the army but said some wore uniforms. The training focused on the use of anti-tank weaponry.
Some 200 men have already received such training over the past three months and there are plans in the future to provide training for a total 1,200 members of the "Free Syrian Army" in two camps in the south and the east of the country, it said on Sunday.
Britain's Guardian newspaper also reported that US trainers were assisting Syrian rebels in Jordan. British and French instructors were participating in the US-led effort, the Guardian said on Saturday, citing Jordanian security sources.
Jordanian intelligence services are involved in the programme, which aims to build around a dozen units totalling some 10,000 fighters to the exclusion of radical Islamists, Der Spiegel reported.
"The Jordanian intelligence services want to prevent Salafists [radical Islamists] crossing from their own country into Syria and then returning later to stir up trouble in Jordan itself," one of the organisers told the paper.
The reports could not be independently verified.
More than 70,000 people have been killed and 1 million refugees have fled the Syrian conflict since it began two years ago.
*With additional reports from Reuters and Agence France-Presse
