The death toll in Syria has risen by another 1,000 people in just 10 days, according to a report that served to deepen divisions within the United Nations over how to respond to the crisis.
This image from amateur video made available by the Ugarit News group purports to show security forces in Daraa
Photo: AP
By Richard Spencer
Middle East Correspondent
6:02PM GMT 13 Dec 2011
On a day that activists and the Syrian government reported scores more deaths from fighting between troops and rebels, Navi Pillay, the UN Human Rights Commissioner, said that more than 5,000 people had been killed since the start of the uprising against the rule of President Bashir al-Assad in March.
This was up significantly from the beginning of the month, when the total stood at 4,000, and does not include any deaths from among Assad's security forces.
Ms Pillay said that 300 of those killed had been children and that 14,000 were in prison, many tortured, and 12,400 had fled the country.
"Independent, credible and corroborated accounts demonstrate that these abuses have taken place as part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians," she told the Security Council. She also requested the regime be referred to the International Criminal Court, as happened previously with that of Col Gaddafi of Libya.
But Ms Pillay made the same request in August, when she reported just 2,000 deaths to the Security Council, and since then sanctions and even a vote of condemnation have been blocked by Russia and China. Yesterday, a war of words broke out between Russia, which is leading the opposition to measures being taken against its long-term Middle Eastern ally, and the Western powers.
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In a direct attack, Gerard Araud, the French ambassador to the UN, said: "It is scandalous that the council, because of opposition from some members and the indifference of others has not been able to act to exert pressure on the Syrian authorities."
The Russians hit back, aware that a whole alliance carefully engineered to balance the West's diplomatic dominance since the end of the Cold War is now at stake, with Syria a lynchpin. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, alleged that the armed anti-Assad groups increasingly active in the conflict were deliberately trying to instigate a "humanitarian catastrophe" as a pretext for international intervention.
"There are those who refuse to put pressure on the armed, extremist part of the opposition and are at the same time accusing us of blocking the UN Security Council's work. I would call this position immoral," he said. He said that experience showed "sanctions never work except for the rarest of exceptions".
The US later urged Russia to back UN Security Council action.
At the start of the uprising, most protests were peaceful, but armed resistance has developed in the last few weeks into daily battles between regulars and members of the "Free Syrian Army", who claim they are defending the civilian population.
According to many reports, that has given rise in turn to retaliatory action, often involving sectarian targeting by both Sunni Muslims and the minority Allawites who dominate the army.
Ms Pillay's figures for the number of dead include civilians, defectors and soldiers killed for refusing to obey orders, but not government troops. The authorities claim more than 1,100 soldiers have died.
Yesterday, as many as 28 people were killed in clashes between the army and the rebels in the northern province of Idlib, with at least 11 civilians caught in the crossfire, though the circumstances of the fighting were disputed. At one stage there was an ambush by rebels of an army convoy, killing seven troops.
Later on, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, government forces fired on a funeral procession, kiling two more. A civilian with Turkish and Saudi nationalities was also killed by troops, though it was unclear whether he was an innocent caught up in the fighting or a "volunteer".
Although a threatened attack on the city of Homs has not yet begun, there were repeated skirmishes. The FSA said it had killed Colonel Qusay Mustafa, its highest ranking army victim yet.
Activists said the heavy fighting this week had been prompted by government attempts to break a strike of shop-keepers and other businessmen.
An activist in the southern city of Deraa told The Daily Telegraph that scores of tanks had moved into the town of Bosor al-Harir where the Free Syrian Army had a presence and were still engaged in gun-fights last night, with bodies of the injured lying unretrieved on the streets. The colonel in charge had threatened to "burn the town" if dissidents were not handed over, he said.
For all the worsening situation and the dramatic portrait painted by Ms Pillay, there is no sign that even if action were taken at the United Nations it would have much effect. Diplomats say that the regime is well-entrenched, and clearly prepared to ignore western voices.
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