Secret UN Syria report

The investigators said orders to shoot unarmed women and children, torture protesters in hospital and shell residential areas came from the "highest level" of army and government.

"The commission received credible and consistent evidence identifying high- and mid-ranking members of the armed forces who ordered their subordinates to shoot at unarmed protesters, kill soldiers who refused to obey such orders, arrest persons without cause, mistreat detained persons and attack civilian neighborhoods with indiscriminate tanks and machine-gun fire," the special team said in a report to the UN Security Council.

The report went on to say that those believed to have given such orders "bear responsibility for crimes against humanity and other gross human rights violations."

The commission, headed by Brazilian Paulo Pinheiro, found that rebel forces were also guilty of committing abuses including summary killings and abductions, "although not comparable in scale."

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has ordered the global body's emergency relief coordinator, Valerie Amos, to visit Syria to demand urgent access to areas of unrest and to assess humanitarian conditions in the country.

The UN has been unable to get a foot in the door in Syria since the uprising began. Amos will ask Damascus to grant relief workers access to those in need. The government of President Bashar al-Assad has yet to respond to the latest UN initiative to enter the country, and it was immediately unclear whether access would be granted.

A UN spokesman said, however: "It is a humanitarian mission. We expect the Syrian government will respond positively."

Journalists killed

The commission report follows the deaths of two Western journalists in the flashpoint city of Homs on Wednesday.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton labeled the killing of US veteran reporter Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik on Wednesday as "crimes."

European diplomats said in the wake of the attacks they would discuss intensified sanctions against Syria at a conference to be held next week. Among the measures would be a ban on Syrian-run cargo flights to the 27-nation EU, a freeze on the European assets of the Syrian central bank and restrictions on trade in gold and precious metals.

The White House, meanwhile, referred to the journalists' deaths as a "tragic incident" that was "another example of the shameless brutality of the Assad regime."

It added that it was "a reminder, too, that the victims are many. And overwhelmingly, in this case, they are innocent Syrian civilians. The brutality of the Assad regime becomes ever more apparent as each day goes by."

France, for its part, demanded access to the victims of the attack and summoned Syria's envoy to Paris, "to remind him of the intolerable nature of the Syrian government's behavior," Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said in a statement.

He added that the Syrian government must immediately stop the attacks.

"Damascus owes us an answer," Juppe said. "France holds the Syrian authorities responsible and accountable for the deaths of the journalists."

Britain, too, summoned the Syrian ambassador to lodge a protest over the deaths and of the continued shelling of Homs.

Death toll mounts

Three other Western journalists were wounded in the attack on the makeshift media center in the rebel-held Baba Amr district of Homs, including Colvin's British photographer Paul Conroy and French reporter Edith Bouvier of Paris broadsheet Le Figaro.

Rights groups say more than 6,000 people have been killed in the 11-month uprising against the Assad regime. Independent confirmation of such figures is impossible due to a government ban on most foreign journalists from reporting in Syria.

dfm/ncy (AFP, Reuters, dpa)