The Geneva forum adopted a resolution brought by Arab and Western powers, urging all parties to refrain from contributing to a further escalation of a conflict in which at least 93,000 people had been killed by the end of April.

Only Venezuela voted against the text, presented by Qatar on behalf of Britain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States – which all back rebel forces. Thirty-seven states backed the motion. Nine abstained.

“Ecuador calls the Council’s attention to that fact that the main proponents of this draft resolution are the ones contributing to continuation of violence by providing arms to opposition groups, thus contributing to the escalation of violence,” Ecuador’s Ambassador Luis Gallego Chiriboga said.

Other Latin American and Asian countries, including Brazil and Pakistan, voiced concerns that the Council had failed to use stronger language to denounce the weapons pouring into Syria.

“If we fail to condemn the transfer of arms in the resolution it is tantamount to adding fuel to the fire,” Costa Rica’s deputy ambassador Christian Guillermet-Fernandez said.

The heated debate was held a day after the United States said it would now arm rebels, having obtained what it said was proof the Syrian government used chemical weapons against fighters trying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

Venezuela’s representative, Felix Pena Ramos, referring to the U.S. accusation on the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons, said: “I am sure these are same people who confirmed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

Syria and its ally Russia rejected the text as unbalanced and counterproductive as efforts were being made to convene an international peace conference.

“It turns a blind eye to the presence of jihadists that come from more than 40 countries,” Syrian Ambassador Faysal Khabbaz Hamoui said. “Certain countries that sponsored the resolution have financed, trained and supported them.”

Russia, whose delegation has observer status and cannot vote, regretted that the United States was one of the initiators of the text despite their joint efforts to convene peace talks.

“The latest one-sided resolution on Syria talks about Hezbollah, but they don’t seem to be worried about 1,000 highly-paid and heavily armed rebel groups,” said Russian second secretary Roman Kashaev.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Navi Pillay, U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights, voiced fears that the bloodshed in recent battles for the Syrian border town of Qusair would be repeated in the northern city of Aleppo.

“All the reports I’m receiving are of augmentation of resources and forces (for an Aleppo offensive) on the part of the government,” Pillay told Reuters Television.

The military balance has shifted in President Bashar al-Assad’s favour in the last two months, with Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hezbollah fighting openly alongside the Syrian military, helping it to recapture Qusair from rebels on June 5. Rebel forces have held parts of Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city, since July.

The new U.N. figure of 93,000 people killed in the Syrian conflict, which began with peaceful protests against Assad in March 2011 and turned into an armed rebellion a few months later, replaces a U.N. estimate of 80,000 issued in mid-May.

The U.N. report said almost 38,000 reported killings had been excluded because records – which require the victim’s full name and date and location of death – were incomplete.

“The true number of those killed is potentially much higher,” Pillay said.

The death toll has averaged more than 5,000 a month since July, and Pillay said this reflected the “drastically deteriorating pattern of the conflict over the past year”.

The Damascus region, Homs and Aleppo have been hardest hit.

The U.N. figures, based on data from the Syrian government and seven human rights monitoring groups, include civilians and combatants, but give no breakdown. They show that at least 6,561 children were among the dead.

“There are also well-documented cases of individual children being tortured and executed, and entire families, including babies, being massacred – which, along with this devastatingly high death toll, is a terrible reminder of just how vicious this conflict has become,” Pillay said.

One of the monitoring groups, the British-based, pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said on Thursday it had now confirmed at least 98,000 deaths in the conflict, but that the total figure could exceed 130,000.

It said the confirmed toll included 25,040 Syrian soldiers and security personnel, and 17,107 pro-Assad militiamen.

Other killings are likely to have occurred without being documented, said the U.N. study, carried out by the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, a U.S.-based non-profit organization.

(Here is a link to the full report: here )

(Additional reporting by Vincent Fribault in Geneva and Oliver Holmes in Beirut; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

Richard Falk said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had “joined in the attacks”.

UN Watch, an activist group that Falk labels as a “pro-Israel lobbying organization”, and Israel’s main ally the United States have called for him to quit. U.S. Ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe described him as “unfit to serve in his role as a UN special rapporteur”.

“I don’t intend to resign and there doesn’t seem to be any formal initiative that is seeking my dismissal,” he told a news briefing a day after addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council.

“My role of trying to speak honestly about the situation that Palestinians are facing under this condition of prolonged occupation generates this sort of reaction that tries to paint anti-Israeli criticism as a form of anti-Semitism,” Falk said.

Falk, an American law professor who is Jewish, accused Israel on Monday of imposing collective punishment on 1.75 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip and said that the enclave’s viability was at stake.

The Israeli and U.S. delegations boycotted the debate at the Human Rights Council where he called for an inquiry into alleged torture of Palestinian detainees in Israel’s custody. Israel has stayed away since March 2012, accusing the Geneva forum of bias.

The U.N. expert, who visited Gaza last December after entering via Egypt, told the council that 70 percent of Gaza’s population depended on international aid and 90 percent of the water was “unfit for human consumption”.

Falk has long been a controversial figure. After taking up the post in May 2008, he compared Israeli forces’ actions in the Gaza Strip to those of the Nazis in wartime Europe.

In December that year he was detained at Ben Gurion airport and deported by Israeli authorities after being barred from crossing into Palestinian areas to carry out his investigation.

In 2011 he wrote on his blog that there had been an “apparent cover-up” by U.S. authorities over the Sept 11, 2001 attacks. He later said that he meant investigations must be transparent and exhaustive.

That July he posted a cartoon which critics called anti-Semitic. It was later removed and he apologized for “unintentionally posting an anti-Semitic cartoon”.

More recently, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon rejected remarks by Falk suggesting the Boston marathon bombings in April were a response to U.S. foreign policy.

“ANTI-SEMITIC CARD”

Falk, referring to Ban on Tuesday, said: “I have tried to discuss the attacks on me and he has not been willing to see me. In fact, he has joined in these attacks.

“What I believe those forces that have been attacking me are doing, which I think is very unfortunate, is to use the anti-Semitic card as a way of intimidating people who speak honestly about the shortcomings of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians and to make it appear as if criticizing Israel is tantamount to what everybody agrees to be objectionable, which is anti-Semitism,” he said on Tuesday.

Falk said that he had received death threats and hate mail over the years but had tried to highlight what had not been understood, particularly in his own country.

“That the occupation is not a neutral reality, but is extremely abusive to the people subject to it, who have endured it for far too long with no end in sight. And that this message needs to be delivered, especially to these citadels of power and influence.

“It explains to me at any rate, and maybe this is self-serving, that the attack on the messenger is a way of diverting attention from the message,” he said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Andrew Roche)

Both Israel and its close ally the United States boycotted the debate at the Human Rights Council where Richard Falk presented his latest report. It also calls for an inquiry into alleged torture of Palestinian detainees in Israel’s custody.

“Forty-six years ago today Israel’s occupation of Palestine began. Six days of war has turned into 46 years of occupation,” Falk, an independent investigator, told the Geneva forum.

“The viability of Gaza needs urgent attention and cannot be left to the mercies of continuing Israeli occupation,” he said of the Islamist Hamas-ruled strip, around which Israel maintains a blockade due to what it says are security concerns.

Falk, who visited Gaza last December after entering via Egypt, said that 70 percent of Gaza’s population depends on international aid for survival and 90 percent of the water is “unfit for human consumption”.

Kerem Shalom crossing is closed often by Israel as a retaliatory measure to tighten the “stranglehold of Gaza”, he said. About 40 per cent of the goods coming through there are food and other basic supplies, including cooking gas, he said.

In the first quarter of 2013, Israel demolished 204 Palestinian homes and structures in the West Bank, displacing 379 Palestinians, he said, citing U.N. figures.

Israel detains nearly 5,000 Palestinians, many held arbitrarily and subjected to torture, coerced confessions, solitary confinement and denial of family visits, he said.

Falk urged the council to establish a commission of inquiry to examine “Israel’s track record of impunity for prison officials and others who interrogate Palestinians”. He called again for a probe into the death of Palestinian Arafat Jaradat last February in disputed circumstances in an Israeli jail.

DOUBLE BOYCOTT

Israel has not taken part in the Geneva forum, which it accuses of bias against it, since March 2012.

For the first time on Monday, the U.S. delegation did not attend the debate, a regular feature on the council’s agenda, after repeating its call for him to resign on Friday.

Washington rejected Falk’s suggestion in his latest report for an investigation into UN Watch, a non-governmental organization whom he accused of carrying out a “smear campaign” against him and distorting his views.

“Mr. Falk’s most recent statement, which he dramatically and recklessly included in an official UN document, is characteristic of previous reprehensible comments and actions he has made during his tenure as a special rapporteur,” U.S. ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe said in a statement.

“It once again starkly demonstrates that he is unfit to serve in his role as a UN special rapporteur,” she said.

Falk, an American law professor who is Jewish, has long been a controversial figure. In 2011 he wrote on his blog that there has been an “apparent cover-up” by U.S. authorities over the Sept 11, 2011, attacks and he also posted an anti-Semitic cartoon, which was later removed.

More recently, U.N. Secretary-General rejected remarks by Falk who suggested that the Boston marathon bombings in April were a response to U.S. foreign policy.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

The United Nations agency, which issued new, long-awaited
guidance to countries on influenza pandemics, said the world was
also in the same “alert phase” for two human strains of bird flu
- H5N1, which emerged a decade ago, and H7N9, first detected in
China in March.

“We are trying to find out as much as we can and we are
concerned about these (three) viruses,” Andrew Harper, WHO
special adviser for health security and environment, told a news
briefing on its new scale for pandemic risk.

The interim guidance, to be finalised later this year,
incorporates lessons from the 2009/2010 pandemic of H1N1 swine
flu, which caused an estimated 200,000 deaths, roughly in line
with annual seasonal flu.

Having been adjusted to include the notion of severity when
assessing risk, the new scale has just four phases against six
previously and is intended to give countries more flexibility in
judging local risks.

“International concern about these infections is high,
because it is possible for this virus to move around the world.
There have been now several examples where the virus has moved
from one country to another through travellers,” the WHO said of
MERS, which causes coughing, fever and pneumonia.

Travellers have carried the virus to Britain, France,
Germany and Italy. Infected people have also been found in
Jordan, Qatar, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.

“Consequently, all countries in the world need to ensure
that their healthcare workers are aware of the virus and the
disease it can cause and that, when unexplained cases of
pneumonia are identified, MERS-CoV should be considered.”

MERS-coronavirus, a distant relative of SARS that emerged in
Saudi Arabia last year, has been confirmed in 55 people
worldwide, killing 31 of them. Forty cases occurred in Saudi
Arabia, many in a hospital in the eastern province of al-Ahsa.

“The overall number of cases is limited but the virus causes
death in about 60 percent of patients,” the WHO said, reporting
on a week-long mission of international experts to Saudi Arabia
that ended on Sunday.

“So far, about 75 percent of the cases in the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia have been in men and most have occurred in people
with one or more major chronic conditions.”

But the source of the MERS virus remained unknown, it said.

Clusters of cases have occurred in families and health
facilities, indicating a limited capacity to spread among people
in close contact with an infected person, it said.

All countries in the Middle East should urgently intensify
disease surveillance to detect any MERS infections, it said.

The WHO has not yet drawn up advice for travellers ahead of
the annual haj pilgrimage in October, which draws millions of
Muslims to Saudi Arabia.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Mike Collett-White)

Shin met senior human rights officials in Geneva this week to discuss a United Nations investigation into alleged crimes against humanity in North Korea, and said he would bear witness to the horrors of his life in Camp 14 to help build an eventual criminal case against North Korea’s leadership.

But in an interview hours before he was due to receive an award from the activist group U.N. Watch, the 30-year-old was under no illusions about the scale of the task he and others faced in their search for justice.

“Maybe they can make the impossible possible,” Shin said of the inquiry, launched by the U.N. Human Rights Council, which aims to gather enough information from camp survivors and other exiles to document violations including torture and executions.

“They need to do it from a long-term perspective and in a very systematic way,” he said, speaking through an interpreter. “I will do my best, whether it is giving testimony or having other interactions with them.”

He vowed to keep speaking about the shadowy political prison camps across North Korea, which rights groups say hold some 200,000 inmates forced to work in farms, mines and factories.

Pyongyang denies the existence of the camps in the isolated country and says it will not cooperate with the U.N. probe.

“This is something I should do, let the whole world know the situation in order to help get rid of those camps,” Shin said.

“Actually on a gut level what I want is for the world to send … troops who would save all the political prisoners in the camps, or something like a major breakthrough which is impossible right now,” he said, sipping a Coke in a cafe.

GENERATION OF WITNESSES

Shin was due to address the European Parliament in Brussels on Thursday, and is one of a new generation of North Korean defectors stepping into the limelight to tell their personal stories to highlight rights abuses at home.

A slight man with glasses, Shin has said that he endured starvation, beatings and torture including being suspended from a hook in the ceiling and lowered over a fire which left burns.

He is roughly the same age as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and lives in Seoul, South Korea, after escaping from his homeland via China eight years ago.

But unlike the privileged heir, his first 22 years were spent in harsh conditions with 20,000 to 30,000 other political prisoners in Camp 14 in Kaechon, South Pyongan province.

Life was bleak, marked by food deprivation and horrors.

“For example beatings and being punished, usually by hunger, and public executions. Those are the things we grew up with.

“The reason for public executions was quite vague, sometimes it was not known. Sometimes they were executed for theft, sometimes for escaping from prison,” Shin said.

“Escape from Camp 14″, by Washington Post journalist Blaine Harden, tells his harrowing story. In it, Shin admits to having denounced his mother and older brother for trying to escape.

His mother was hanged, his brother shot by a firing squad. He watched their executions with his father, whom he left behind when he fled nine years later a day after New Year’s.

“There were a lot of fences, including electric wires. An inmate who tried to escape with me failed (and died). I was almost electrocuted,” he recalled of his escape in the snow.

Shin headed north in a stolen soldier’s uniform, taking a month to reach China. He bribed border guards with cigarettes.

“That was nothing special back in 2005, so many people were crossing the border at that time. Ordinary North Koreans who were hungry. Now security is really tightened,” he said.

He voiced concern at the fate of nine young North Korean defectors, believed to be orphans, whom the U.N. said last week were sent back by China to their homeland.

“I feel sad because when they were sent back to North Korea they must be subject to harsh treatment and beatings and they could even be sent to a political prison camp,” Shin said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Mike Collett-White)

“We have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to hold this conference in June. We will be continuing our consultations with Russia and the United States to see about windows of opportunity to hold the conference as soon as possible – hopefully in July,” he told reporters in Geneva.

The conference would begin with a high-level meeting over two days chaired by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. That would be followed by intensive negotiations between the Syrian parties, facilitated by Brahimi.

“The only sticking point is … the Syrian component of the conference,” he said. “The Syrian sides are not ready.”

“Evidently, there is still a lot of work to do to bring a conference about.”

A senior U.S. official said Russia and the United States had agreed it was “indispensable” that both sides were represented by credible, authoritative and empowered delegations.

“Obviously the opposition coalition is forming itself. Naming its representatives, agreeing on a delegation is one piece of it,” said the U.S. official.

“But there is not yet full clarity on who the regime would send and what that delegation would look like.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said the opposition had yet to name its delegation.

“The whole issue is that the Syrian opposition, unlike the government, has not made a fundamental decision about its participation in this conference,” he told Interfax news agency.

The only precondition for attending the talks is to sign up to the communique agreed at a Geneva meeting a year ago, which called for a political transition and establishment of a transitional governing body with full executive powers.

“Who that is and how it occurs has to happen by mutual consent. But the ‘what’ is perfectly clear, there will be a new Syria,” said the senior U.S. official.

Last year’s conference in Geneva almost came unstuck over the question of Iran’s participation, which Russia supported but the United States opposed. In the end neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia took part.

Gatilov and the U.S. official, who requested anonymity, said the participant list at the planned conference had not yet been agreed.

Brahimi and U.S. and Russian officials plan to hold a second round of preparatory talks on June 25.

(Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow; editing by Gareth Jones and Andrew Roche)

“We have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to hold this conference in June. We will be continuing our consultations with Russia and the United States to see about windows of opportunity to hold the conference as soon as possible – hopefully in July,” he told reporters in Geneva.

The conference would begin with a high-level meeting over two days chaired by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. That would be followed by intensive negotiations between the Syrian parties, facilitated by Brahimi.

“The only sticking point is … the Syrian component of the conference,” he said. “The Syrian sides are not ready.”

“Evidently, there is still a lot of work to do to bring a conference about.”

A senior U.S. official said Russia and the United States had agreed it was “indispensable” that both sides were represented by credible, authoritative and empowered delegations.

“Obviously the opposition coalition is forming itself. Naming its representatives, agreeing on a delegation is one piece of it,” said the U.S. official.

“But there is not yet full clarity on who the regime would send and what that delegation would look like.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said the opposition had yet to name its delegation.

“The whole issue is that the Syrian opposition, unlike the government, has not made a fundamental decision about its participation in this conference,” he told Interfax news agency.

The only precondition for attending the talks is to sign up to the communiqué agreed at a Geneva meeting a year ago, which called for a political transition and establishment of a transitional governing body with full executive powers.

“Who that is and how it occurs has to happen by mutual consent. But the ‘what’ is perfectly clear, there will be a new Syria,” said the senior U.S. official.

Last year’s conference in Geneva almost came unstuck over the question of Iran’s participation, which Russia supported but the United States opposed. In the end neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia took part.

Gatilov and the U.S. official, who requested anonymity, said the participant list at the planned conference had not yet been agreed.

Brahimi and U.S. and Russian officials plan to hold a second round of preparatory talks on June 25.

(Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow; editing by Gareth Jones and Andrew Roche)

In their latest report, human rights investigators said they
had received allegations that Syrian government forces and
rebels had used the banned weapons, but most testimony related
to their use by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

Increasing reports from the battlefield of the use of
chemical weapons have sounded alarm bells in the West, lending
urgency to a new diplomatic push to end the war. U.S. Secretary
of State John Kerry said last week that the use of chemical
weapons was unacceptable.

In Syria, Qusair came under renewed missile attack as
fighting there dragged into its third week, prompting calls for
humanitarian access to offer some relief to the thousands
trapped in the city under siege by government forces.

Those hoping to save themselves were faced with the
agonising choice of digging holes in the ground to escape the
bombing or embarking on a perilous cross-country trek to
neighbouring Lebanon.

The U.N. commission said it examined four reported toxic
attacks in Syria in March and April but could not determine
which side was behind them.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that limited
quantities of toxic chemicals were used. It has not been
possible, on the evidence available, to determine the precise
chemical agents used, their delivery systems or the
perpetrator,” Paulo Pinheiro, who chairs the U.N. commission of
inquiry, told a news conference in Geneva.

“The witnesses that we have interviewed include victims,
refugees who fled some areas, and medical staff,” Pinheiro said,
declining to be more specific for reasons of confidentiality.

MUTUAL ACCUSATIONS

Assad’s government and its opponents have accused each other
of using chemical weapons.

Syria’s ambassador, Faysal Khabbaz Hamoui, in a debate at
the U.N. Human Rights Council on Tuesday, questioned the
“neutrality and professionalism” of the panel.

Russian Ambassador Alexey Borodavkin called for U.N. experts
to be sent to Khan al-Assal in the northern Aleppo province,
where an alleged chemical weapons strike took place on March 19,
one of the four cited by the inquiry.

A team of U.N. inspectors has so far been denied access to
Syria and has been unable to establish whether chemical weapons
have been used.

The U.N. rights team of more than 20 investigators conducted
430 interviews from Jan. 15 to May 15 among refugees in
neighbouring countries and by Skype with people still in Syria.

But findings remained inconclusive and it was vital that
U.N. experts be allowed to collect samples from victims and the
sites of alleged attacks, the rights investigators said.

“The war in Syria is a major catastrophe of our time,”
Pinheiro told the Geneva forum. “Syria is in free-fall.
Brutality has become a tactic of war,” he said.

At least 17 massacres were committed in the period under
review, making a total of 30 since September, the report said.

Syrian leaders must be held accountable for directing a
policy that includes besieging and bombing cities and executing
civilians, the independent investigators said.

“The documented violations are consistent and widespread,
evidence of a concerted policy implemented by the leaders of
Syria’s military and government,” they said in their fifth
report on the 26-month-old war that has killed more than 80,000.

Government forces and allied militia have committed war
crimes including murder, torture and rape, the report said.

For the past two weeks, Syrian government forces have laid
siege to the border town of Qusair, where aid agencies say
hundreds of wounded and other civilians are trapped in dire
conditions.

HORRENDOUS SCENES

Syria’s envoy Khabbaz Hamoui said the report was selective.

“The commission referred only casually to examples of the
crimes perpetrated by the ‘takfiri’ (extremist) groups including
extrajudicial executions, slaying of captives, tearing open the
bodies of victims and eating out their guts. Some horrendous
scenes that shocked the whole world,” he told the talks.

As Syrian government forces try to grind down the rebels in
Qusair, trapped civilians have had to choose between sheltering
from the bombs or risking a 100 km (60 mile) hike to safety.

“Qusair itself is described as a ghost town, heavily damaged
and filled with the sound of bombs. People are hiding in bunkers
or, even worse, in holes that they’ve dug,” U.N. refugee agency
spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a briefing in Geneva.

“One woman told us that she spent, with her children, one
week inside a hole that was dug into the ground.”

Qusair, near the Lebanese border, was home to about 30,000
people before the war. It is now the latest flashpoint, a
strategic prize that both sides need to secure supply routes.

With the fighting there dragging into its third week, Syrian
forces fired ground missiles and launched a series of air raids
on the town on Tuesday, activists said.

Earlier quick advances made by forces loyal to Assad and the
allied Hezbollah militia have slowed as they tried to seize the
northern quarter of the town.

Opposition leaders called for the creation of a humanitarian
corridor to allow people from Qusair to flee to Lebanon.

“We have in Qusair more than 1,000 wounded, and 400 of them
are in critical condition. Some of them have been bleeding for
days,” said George Sabra, acting head of the opposition National
Coalition.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said the Syrian
government had said it was willing to grant the agency access to
Qusair once military operations there were ended.

(Writing by Giles Elgood; editing by David Stamp)

In their latest report, they said they had received allegations that Syrian government forces and rebels had used the banned weapons, but that most testimony related to their use by state forces.

The commission examined four reported toxic attacks in March and April but could not determine which side was behind them.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that limited quantities of toxic chemicals were used. It has not been possible, on the evidence available, to determine the precise chemical agents used, their delivery systems or the perpetrator,” Paulo Pinheiro, who chairs the U.N. commission of inquiry, told a news conference in Geneva.

“The witnesses that we have interviewed include victims, refugees who fled some areas, and medical staff,” Pinheiro said, declining to be more specific for reasons of confidentiality.

President Bashar al-Assad’s government and its opponents have accused each other of using chemical weapons.

The U.N. team of more than 20 investigators conducted 430 interviews from January 15 to May 15 among refugees in neighboring countries and by Skype with people still in Syria.

Vitit Muntarbhorn, one of its members, said the team had cross-checked testimony about chemical weapons and viewed videos including on YouTube.

But findings remained inconclusive and it was vital that a stalled separate team of experts named by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon be given full access to Syria to collect samples from victims and sites of alleged attacks, the team said.

In any case, atrocities committed with conventional weapons far outweighed any casualties from the use of chemical agents, Pinheiro said, noting the absence of a large-scale toxic attack.

“NEW LEVELS OF BRUTALITY”

“The conflict in Syria has reached new levels of brutality”, the 29-page report said. “War crimes, crimes against humanity and gross human rights violations continue apace.”

Syrian leaders must be held accountable for directing a policy that includes besieging and bombing cities and executing civilians, the investigators said.

“The documented violations are consistent and widespread, evidence of a concerted policy implemented by the leaders of Syria’s military and government,” they said in their fifth report on the 26-month-old war that has killed more than 80,000.

Government forces and allied militia have committed murder, torture, rape and other inhumane acts, the report said.

For the past two weeks, Syrian government forces have laid siege to the border town of Qusair where agencies say hundreds of wounded and other civilians are trapped in dire conditions.

Syrian rebels and allied foreign militants have murdered civilians as well as captured soldiers, often after “show trials” in an increasingly sectarian conflict, the report said.

“They continue to endanger the civilian population by positioning military objectives in civilian areas,” it added.

However, war crimes by rebels, including murder, torture and hostage-taking, did not reach the intensity and scale of those committed by government forces and affiliated militia.

The team called on the U.N. Security Council to ensure that those responsible for crimes face justice, including by possible referral of Syria to the International Criminal Court.

“Accountability will come, it will come in any case,” said Carla del Ponte, a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor and a member of the commission.

At least 17 massacres were committed in the period under review, making a total of 30 since September, the report said.

Dozens of women and children were killed in May in the coastal villages of Baida and Banias, where evidence links the slaughter to government-backed militia, it said.

Eleven kneeling, blindfolded men were shot in the back of the head in Deir al-Zor province by al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front rebels, the report said, citing a video that appeared in May.

Regarding a separate incident near Deir al-Zor in which the evidence also points to rebels, it said: “Video footage emerged showing a child participating in the beheading of two kidnapped men. Following investigation, it is believed that the video is authentic and the men were soldiers, killed as depicted.”

(Writing by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alistair Lyon)