Human Rights Group Documents Violence From Inside Syria Syria's state news agency said that after days of heavy shelling and intense fighting in the northwestern Latakia Province, government forces had retaken the rebellious village of Al Heffa, driving antigovernment fighters out. The eight-day siege and subsequent clearing of Al Heffa appeared to fit a pattern of violence documented by a senior researcher from Amnesty International, whose three visits to northern Syria in April and May gave a fuller picture of the conflict's brutality there and pointed to a top-down policy of using overwhelming force to subdue restive areas of the country. Such measures have led to acts of gratuitous violence, the researcher said. "These were not the actions of rogue elements in the forces or people taking their own initiative, but crimes against humanity committed as part of a state policy," said the researcher, Donatella Rovera, in a telephone interview describing her findings, to be published in an Amnesty report to be released Wednesday at 7 p.m. Among the first international human rights activists to report from inside Syria, Ms. Rovera spoke to witnesses and viewed the aftermath of battles in 23 villages and towns around Idlib and Aleppo. "The army is not holding anywhere," she said. They control the main roads. When they go into the towns, they go in with heavy forces. The only people who are there are those who have not managed to get out. Ms. Rovera in her report included details of one especially brutal episode in the village of Ayn Larouz in the northern Idlib Province that was also highlighted Tuesday by the United Nations in an annual report on children in armed conflicts. After a siege and days of battle, the army stormed into the village, arresting dozens before summarily executing four people, two men and two boys, 16 and 17, according to a witness. "Their burned bodies were found three days later in the mountains nearby," the witness said. Ms. Rovera described seeing buildings burned completely in many areas, an indication, she said, that incendiary devices and chemicals were being used systematically by Syrian forces to destroy homes in "gratuitous" acts of retribution after battles with opposition forces. While she found that the vast majority of killing, looting and destruction was committed by Syrian forces and pro-government militias known as shabiha, Amnesty International has also condemned brutality by opposition groups, including the kidnapping and killing of those suspected of working with or supporting the government. The Syrian government's portrayal of events in Heffa appeared diametrically opposed to the accounts in Ms. Rovera's report. According to SANA, the state news agency, the Foreign Ministry said, "Armed terrorist groups in the city carried out operations of killing and terrorizing against the innocent citizens and acts of looting and vandalism against public and private properties and shops." The ministry then called on the United Nations observers to visit the town and "to verify what is taking place on the ground and inspect the acts of these terrorist groups." A day earlier, as The Lede reported, an observer team had been kept from the town by a hostile crowd that struck their vehicles with stones and metal rods. Ms. Rovera had also previously described her trip in stark terms in an opinion article published on Al Jazeera's Web site in late May that included some of the testimony gathered during her time in Syria. One witness described tanks bearing down on a village in an attack in February: News came that the army was coming towards our village with dozens of tanks and heavy military vehicles. The young men ran out to go hide in the hills but the army was shooting into the area around the village from far, so most of the youths went back into their houses. When the soldiers arrived they took 16 youths, one of them who was only 16, and dragged them to a field right opposite the houses and shot them dead. Four other youths who were trying to run away were also shot dead. Then the soldiers left but we could not pick up the bodies for one and a half hour because the army kept shooting into the village from up on the bridge.