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BEIRUT: The head of a UN investigative commission on Friday called commitments made by the new authorities in Syria to protect the rights of minorities “encouraging” but said attacks have continued on members of the Alawite sect in the months since a major outbreak of sectarian violence on Syria’s coast.

Paulo Pinheiro, the head of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that the current Syrian government — led by Islamist former insurgents who ousted former Syrian President Bashar Assad — had given his team “unfettered access” to the coast and to witnesses of the violence and victims’ families.

“Disturbingly, reports continue to circulate of ongoing killings and arbitrary arrests of members of the Alawite community, as well as the confiscation of the property of those who fled the March violence,” he said.

Pinheiro’s commission also “documented abductions by unknown individuals of at least six Alawite women this spring in several Syrian governorates,” two of whom remain missing, and has received “credible reports of more abductions,” he said.

Pinheiro also called on authorities to put in place more protections for places of worship after Sunday’s suicide bombing attack on a church outside of Damascus. The attack, which killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens more, was the first of its kind to take place in the Syrian capital in years.

The Syrian government has said that the perpetrators belonged to a cell of the Daesh group and that they thwarted a subsequent attempt to target a Shiite shrine in the Sayyida Zeinab suburb in Damascus.

“Attacks on places of worship are outrageous and unacceptable,” Pinheiro said. “The authorities must ensure the protection of places of worship and threatened communities and ensure that perpetrators and enablers are held accountable.”

Assad was deposed in a lightning rebel offensive in December, bringing an end to a nearly 14-year civil war.

In March, hundreds of civilians, most of them from the Alawite minority to which Assad belongs, were killed in revenge attacks after clashes broke out between pro-Assad armed groups and the new government security forces on the Syrian coast.

Pinheiro said his commission had documented scattered “revenge attacks” that happened before that, including killings in several villages in Hama and Homs provinces in late January in which men who had handed over their weapons under a “settlement” process set up for former soldiers and members of security forces under Assad, believing that they would be granted an amnesty in exchange for disarmament, were then “ill-treated and executed.”

He praised the interim government’s formation of a body tasked with investigating the attacks on the coast and said government officials had told his team that “dozens of alleged perpetrators” were arrested.

Pinheiro said the government needs to carry out a “reform and vetting program” as it integrates a patchwork of former rebel factions into a new army and security services and enact “concrete policies to put an end to Syria’s entrenched cycles of violence and revenge, in a context where heightened tensions and sectarian divisions have been reignited.”

NEW YORK CITY: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Warning that the humanitarian crisis Israel created in the territory had reached “horrific proportions,” he demanded full, safe and sustained access for deliveries of aid.

Speaking ahead of his departure to attend the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, co-hosted by the UN and Spain in Seville from June 30-July 3, Guterres said the situation in Gaza has now grown more dire than at any previous point in the long-running conflict.

“Bombs are falling — on tents, on families, on those with nowhere left to run,” he added. “People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence.”

He said the Israeli military operations launched in response to the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, attacks he “unequivocally condemned,” have displaced families repeatedly, confining the population of Gaza to less than one-fifth of its total area. Even these shrinking safe zones remain under threat, he noted.

Guterres acknowledged the recent ceasefire agreement between Israel and Iran as a sign of hope but insisted that political courage is now needed to secure a similar ceasefire in Gaza.

Referencing the limited amount of humanitarian aid that has been allowed to enter the enclave, he said: “What’s needed now is a surge; the trickle must become an ocean.”

A small shipment of medical supplies from the UN crossed the border into Gaza this week. However, it was the first in months and Guterres stressed it was far from sufficient.

“Doctors are forced to choose who gets the last vial of medicine, or the last ventilator,” he said. “Aid workers themselves are starving. This cannot be normalized.”

Israel, as the occupying power, is obligated under the rules of international law to allow and facilitate humanitarian assistance, he added.

Guterres also dismissed alternative delivery plans for aid as “dangerous schemes,” arguing that the UN already has a detailed, functional plan built on neutrality, impartiality and the trust of affected communities and donors.

“It worked during the last ceasefire, it must be allowed to work again,” he said.

In a direct appeal to governments and other international actors, Guterres urged those in positions of power to fulfill their legal responsibilities, and those with influence that could help to use it.

He called on all UN member states to uphold the UN Charter, which was reaffirmed only a day earlier during the organization’s 80th anniversary commemorations.

“The solution to this problem is ultimately political,” he said. “The only sustainable path to re-establishing hope is by paving the way to the two-state solution. Diplomacy and human dignity for all must prevail.”