Local militias used in Syria mass killings THE Syrian regime appears to be using local militias known as Popular Committees to carry out sometimes sectarian mass killings in Syria, a UN inquiry team says. "In a disturbing and dangerous trend, mass killings allegedly perpetrated by Popular Committees have at times taken on sectarian overtones," the UN commission of inquiry, led by Brazilian Paulo Pinheiro, said in an update to its latest report on the situation in Syria, without giving concrete examples of the killings. The groups, it said, were frequently described as Shabbiha militias and were reportedly being set up to protect their neighbourhoods against anti-government armed groups and criminal gangs. But the groups, which according to defectors "mirror the ethnic, religious and class composition of the neighbourhoods they protect," had evolved to reinforce government forces, the report found, adding their presence had been documented across Syria. "Recently, the regime has begun to integrate the Popular Committees along with other sympathising groups in a new paramilitary force called the National Defence Forces, institutionalising the existing militias and organising them into an operational structure," it said. The commission, which on Monday presented the findings of its report published last month to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, said the past two months had seen a rapid deterioration of the situation in Syria. Syrian ambassador Faysal Khabbaz Hamoni, meanwhile, lambasted the report, which he said was full of errors and based on "testimonials of which the reliability and truthfulness we question." The commission - set up in 2011 at the behest of the UN Human Rights Council - has previously detailed what it believes are war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Syrian government forces and their allies, and, to a lesser extent, by opposition fighters. It is set to submit a confidential list of names of suspected perpetrators to the UN human rights office, and has repeatedly urged the deadlocked UN Security Council to refer the cases to the International Criminal Court. Switzerland on Monday, meanwhile, presented a petition signed by 63 countries calling for the Security Council to refer the Syrian violence to the International Criminal Court.