UN rights chief seeks regime's prosecution

Geneva:  The UN's human rights chief called yesterday for Syria to be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) over allegations that its crackdown on opposition protesters has led to crimes against humanity.

Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said fresh reports from the country — including that 307 children have been killed since March —reinforced the need for the Security Council to submit the situation in Syria to the Hague-based court.

"In light of the manifest failure of the Syrian authorities to protect their citizens, the international community needs to take urgent and effective measures to protect the Syrian people," Pillay told an emergency meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

A draft resolution backed by African, European, Asian, Arab and American members of the 47-nation rights council calls for the establishment of a special investigator on Syria, but leaves open the issue of whether the more powerful Security Council should refer the country to the ICC.

Russia and China have held back support for the resolution. The two permament members of the Security Council have condemned the bloodshed, but are staunchly resisting further international pressure on Syria.

On Thursday Pillay said that Syria has entered a state of civil war with more than 4,000 people dead and an increasing number of soldiers defecting from the army to fight President Bashar Al Assad's regime. Civil war has been the worst-case scenario in Syria since the revolt against Al Assad began eight months ago.

Damascus has a web of allegiances that extends to Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah resistance movement and Iran's theocracy, raising fears of a regional conflagration.

Civil war fears

The conflict has shown little sign of letting up. Activists reported up to 22 people killed on Thursday, adding to what has become a daily grind of violence.

"We are placing the [death toll] figure at 4,000 but really the reliable information coming to us is that it's much more than that," Pillay said in Geneva.

"As soon as there were more and more defectors threatening to take up arms, I said this in August before the Security Council, that there's going to be a civil war," she added. "And at the moment, that's how I am characterizing this."

US State Department spokesman Mark Toner declined to call it a civil war.

"The overwhelming use of force has been taken by Al Assad and his regime," Toner told reporters. "So there's no kind of equanimity here."

‘Dangerous path'

Toner said Al Assad's government has taken Syria down a dangerous path, and that "the regime's bloody repression of the protests has not surprisingly led to this kind of reaction that we've seen with the Free Syrian Army".

The Free Syrian Army, a group of defectors from the military, has emerged as the most visible armed challenge to Al Assad. The group holds no territory, appears largely disorganised and is up against a fiercely loyal and cohesive military.

Protesters shot dead in Daraa and Homs

Syrian government forces shot dead at least six demonstrators demanding foreign intervention to stop a crackdown aimed at protests against President Bashar Al Assad, activists said.

Four people were killed in the southern province of Daraa and two others in the central province of Homs, Syrian activists based in Lebanon said.

At least 20 people were also arrested in the rebellious provinces of Homs, Daraa and Idlib. Syrian troops also wounded two people when they opened fire on the northern border district of Wadi Khalid yesterday, a local official said, as gunbattles raged across the frontier.

A Lebanese woman was hurt by gunfire that came from a Syrian military post during an hour-long shootout, said Mahmoud Khazaal, former mayor of the Lebanese border town of Muqaybli.

A Syrian man, also wounded by the gunfire, was hospitalised in the northern district of Akkar, a medical official said, requesting anonymity.