By Rob Nordland, Nick Cumming-Bruce and Alan Cowell, New York Times, June 27/28, 2012

Syria said that rebels stormed a pro-government television station, but opposition fighters said the attackers were in fact defectors from the loyalist Republican Guard.

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[....] The conflicting accounts of who carried out the assault on the television station, the al-Ikhbaria satellite broadcaster, reflected the difficulties that outsiders face in ascertaining the true course of events in the Syrian conflict, from which independent reporters and most international relief and monitoring officials are effectively barred.

Those difficulties were illustrated Wednesday in findings by a panel from the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, which is investigating rights violations in Syria. The panel said it was unable to determine conclusively who was responsible for the May 25 massacre of 108 civilians in the western region of Houla, but “considers that forces loyal to the government may have been responsible for many of the deaths.”

While the investigators accused government forces of committing violations on “an alarming scale” in recent months, they also found that both sides had carried out summary executions. And they determined that the nature of the conflict had changed, escalating significantly despite Mr. Annan’s peace entreaties [....]