DAMASCUS – A UN panel said Thursday the army was to blame for most rights abuses in the latest violence that has swept Syria, as a watchdog reported renewed military shelling of a rebel bastion.

Syria’s main opposition bloc began searching for a new leader after Paris-based academic Burhan Ghalioun formally resigned.

In Geneva, the UN-apppointed Commission of Inquiry on Syria said the army and security forces were responsible for the majority of the serious abuses committed since March this year as they hunt down defectors and opponents.

“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 conducted in locations known for hosting defectors and/or armed persons, or perceived as supportive of anti-government armed groups,” said the panel.

These violations were committed “as part of military or search operations conducted in locations known for hosting defectors and/or armed persons, or perceived as supportive of anti-government armed groups,” it said.

The panel said “a clear pattern” had emerged of government blockades to “weed out” wanted people and their families, causing children to die for lack of adequate health care.
The report was issued as government forces pounded the rebel stronghold of Rastan for an 11th consecutive day, killing at least three civilians, according the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Violence elsewhere killed 10 other people, including eight people who were summarily executed in northwestern Idlib province, the Britain-based watchdog reported.
Government forces have been trying to overrun Rastan since May 14, when rebel fighters from the battered central city of Homs regrouped in the town that straddles the main highway linking Damascus to the north.

Elsewhere in the country, one civilian and regular army soldier were killed in eastern Deir Ezzor province, according to the Observatory. “Regime forces killed a young man at dawn in Quriya town in Deir Ezzor,” it said, adding clashes between rebel forces and regime troops were taking place in the town, leaving dead one soldier.

More than 12,600 people have been killed in Syria since a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule broke out in March 2011, including nearly 1,500 since a UN-backed truce took effect on April 12, says the Observatory. — Agencies