As unrest rages,entire villages head out

Members said refugees had told them that in some cases,entire villages had been warned by military columns that suspected insurgents hiding in their midst must surrender or the villages would be shelled. They did not identify villages by name.

The panel’s chief,Sergio Pinheiro,said the pattern of killings had also shifted — from mainly clashes between protesters and security forces to shelling and shootings by military units deployed to rout insurgents hiding among civilians now. “This is a new trend,” he said,calling it a reflection of the government’s determination to exact “collective punishment.”

The UN refugee agency in Geneva has reported 17,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey,16,000 in Lebanon and at least 8,000 in Jordan,and that it is developing a contingency plan for more than 200,000 refugees.

Pinheiro’s commission said it suspected that thousands of Syrians who had fled their homeland had not registered as refugees out of fear that Syrian forces would take revenge on relatives back home. Yakin Erturk,a panel member,said some refugees had told investigators of far-reaching efforts by forces to cover up misdeeds when Arab League monitors were visiting Syria earlier this year. In one example,she said,doctors in Aleppo had been ordered to sedate patients who had been tortured so that they could not speak.

The Syrian government has refused to allow the commission into the country.

The panel said they based their findings on extensive interviews with more than 400 refugees,aerial surveillance data and other evidence. Asked if it were possible the commission had been misled,Pinheiro,a veteran investigator of rights abuses,said he and his colleagues had extensive experience compiling reports without direct access from unfriendly governments. “We are not particularly dumb,” he said.