The leader of the United Nations publicly rebuked Syria’s government on Thursday, accusing it of committing atrocities against Syrian civilians, including children, as military forces in the country were reported to have expanded their intensified campaign of shelling and shootings into the city of Dara’a, where the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began almost a year ago. The criticism by Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, came hours ahead of a scheduled vote at the General Assembly on an Arab League-sponsored resolution condemning Mr. Assad’s government for its harsh crackdown on the political opposition and endorsing an Arab League proposal to resolve the conflict, which is increasingly resembling a civil war.
The resolution before the 193-member General Assembly was expected to receive decisive approval despite efforts to block it by Syria and Syria’s principal backer, Russia, a long-time Assad supporter and arms supplier. The resolution is nonbinding and has no enforcement power — unlike a Security Council resolution vetoed by Russia and China nearly two weeks ago — but still carries symbolic weight as a barometer of world opinion.
After the Russia-China veto, Mr. Assad’s forces intensified their crackdown, most notably a relentless daily barrage on the central city of Homs, an epicenter of resistance, that was corroborated by witness accounts and videos posted on the Internet. Mr. Assad’s critics accused him of interpreting the double veto as a green light to crush the uprising with overwhelming military force.
Syrian opposition groups reported an expansion of the military campaign on Thursday, with government forces hitting targets in the northern province of Idlib and central province of Hama. They also reported military attacks further south into Dara’a near the Jordan border, where the arrests of anti-Assad demonstrators in March 2011 was the spark that escalated into the current conflict, the most violent and protracted of the Arab Spring uprisings so far.
The Local Coordination Committees, a Syrian activist group that has sought to document casualties and atrocities, reported that at least 63 people were killed around the country on Thursday, including at least four in Dara’a. The group included in that total an account of what it said was a military massacre of 15 detainees in Jisr-Shougour, an area in northwestern Syria near the Lebanon border, along with five of their relatives who had sought to retrieve the corpses. These accounts could not be independently verified.
The group also reported that Mr. Assad’s security forces in Damascus, the capital, raided the office of Mazen Darwish, an activist and journalist who is the director of the Syrian Center for Media and Free Expression, arresting him and an unspecified number of others.
Mr. Ban made his criticism of Syria while on a visit to Vienna, where he spoke briefly and answered questions at a news conference posted on the United Nations web site .
“On Syria, I continue to be gravely concerned at the level of violence and mounting loss of life,” he said. Referring to a bleak appraisal of the Syria conflict made at the General Assembly earlier in the week by his top human rights official, Navi Pillay, Mr. Ban recited the statistics she had compiled: more than 5,400 Syrians killed last year, thousands missing, 25,000 refugees in other countries and more than 70,000 internally displaced.
“Every day those numbers rise,” Mr. Ban said. “We see neighborhoods shelled indiscriminately. Hospitals used as torture centers. Children as young as 10 years old jailed and abused. We see almost certain crimes against humanity.”
Mr. Ban also held a meeting in Vienna with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, who has been the leading voice against efforts at the United Nations to impose a solution in Syria that would require Mr. Assad to step down. A statement by Mr. Ban’s office posted on the United Nations web site said both men exchanged views on Syria and “the Secretary-General emphasized the need for an urgent end to the violence and bloodshed. He said that it was vital to establish humanitarian access as soon as possible while the search for a political solution to the crisis continues.”
Mr. Assad has called the domestic forces aligned against him nothing more than foreign-backed terrorist gangs, and he has insisted he has no reason to relinquish power, as his opponents have demanded.
But in an apparent attempt to show some flexibility, his government on Wednesday accelerated the timetable for a constitutional referendum that would theoretically expand political freedoms. The referendum is now scheduled for Feb. 26, more than a month ahead of schedule, but with widespread areas of the country in varying stages of chaos or siege, it is unclear how the vote would be done.
Mr. Assad’s critics have dismissed the referendum move as a cynical and empty gesture.
