Both Syrian government forces and rebels are continuing to commit human rights abuses six weeks into a fragile ceasefire engineered by UN envoy Kofi Annan, UN investigators said in a report on Thursday.
“Most of the serious human rights violations documented by the Commission in this update were committed by the Syrian army and security services as part of military or search operations,” said the Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria, established by the U.N. Human Rights Council last year to probe rights abuses.
The report said entire families had been executed in some instances.
The report also said that Syrian security forces had used lethal force to suppress demonstrations in cities and villages across the country since March. It also said government troops had shelled residential areas.
But the report also stated that rebels had executed or tortured captured soldiers and abducted civilians in a bid to force prisoner exchanges or receive ransoms. It also accused the rebels of using children as cooks or messengers in conflict zones.
The investigators, lead by Brazilian expert Paulo Pinheiro, were not allowed into Syria and were forced to base their report on over 200 interviews with victims and witnesses.
The team of investigators has compiled a secret list of Syrian officials suspected of ordering crimes against humanity during the conflict. The list has been handed over to UN rights chief Navi Pillay, who has said that those guilty of such crimes should be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court.
