GENEVA (Reuters) - Syrian government forces and allied militia have committed war crimes including murder and torture in what appears to be state-directed policy, United Nations investigators said on Wednesday.
Syrian rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad have also committed war crimes but these "did not reach the gravity, frequency and scale" of those carried out by the army and security forces, the investigators said.
The report called for the U.N. Security Council to take "appropriate action" given the gravity of documented violations by all sides.
The Security Council can refer a case to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, a United Nations tribunal, but Russia and China - which have veto power - have been loathe to condemn Syria.
"We have identified both parties as guilty of war crimes and of course a greater number and of bigger variety from the government side," Karen AbuZayd, a senior U.S. investigator and former head of the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"What happened on the government side appears to be a policy of the state. It is not just widespread but similar large-scale complex operations, how they are carried out, the way the military and security work together," she said.
The independent investigators, led by Brazilian Paulo Pinheiro, conducted more than 1,000 interviews, mainly with Syrian refugees or defectors who have fled to neighboring countries, over the past year to produce their latest 102-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Council.
They found "reasonable grounds" to affirm that government forces and the allied shabbiha militia had committed crimes against humanity, war crimes and gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.
These included "unlawful killing, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, sexual violence, indiscriminate attack, pillaging and destruction of property".
A Syrian air raid killed at least 30 people in a rebel-held northern border town on Wednesday, opposition activists said, and a bomb went off near U.N. and military sites in the capital Damascus, wounding three.
"PURSUANT TO STATE POLICY"
Evidence confirmed a previous finding that "violations had been committed pursuant to State policy," the report said.
"Large-scale operations conducted in different governorates (provinces), their similar modus operandi, their complexity and integrated military/security apparatus indicate involvement at the highest levels of the armed and security forces and the government," it said.
Both government forces and armed insurgents had displayed "more brutal tactics and new military capabilities" as fighting escalated during the 17-month conflict, the report said.
"We weren't able to say that the anti-government forces got a lot of sophisticated weapons, they are just doing better with what they have and have been getting training," AbuZayd said.
Each side had violated children's rights during the conflict, it said. At least 125 youths under age 18, mainly boys, had been killed since February, while others were arbitrarily arrested.
"Children described having been beaten, whipped with electrical cables, burned with cigarettes and subjected to electrical shocks to the genitals," the investigators said of those in the custody of state forces.
Armed insurgents continue to use children as couriers or to help with medical evacuations, they said, also voicing concern at reports that rebels have deployed some minors as fighters.
Completing their probe into a massacre in the town of Houla in May - which the government blamed on Islamist "terrorists" - they said government forces and shabbiha fighters were responsible for the killings of more than 100 civilians.
Forty-one children were among the Houla victims, including some who died during shelling, "but most appeared to have been shot at close range".
The investigators said they would update their confidential list of suspects or units responsible for crimes and give it to U.N. rights boss Navi Pillay when their mandate ends next month.
They had received "consistent evidence that mid- and high-ranking members of government forces were directly involved in illegal acts".
"Defectors stated that commanders ordered their subordinates to shoot civilians and 'hors de combat' fighters, and to torture and mistreat detainees. Orders were often enforced at gunpoint and anyone hesitating to comply risked arrest or summary execution," the report said.
Leaders of armed rebel groups were also implicated in war crimes and other abuses, the investigators said. "Local commanders either ordered the execution of captured members of government forces and the Shabbiha or killed them themselves."
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Robin Pomeroy)
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