DAMASCUS: Amnesty International on Thursday accused Syria of committing crimes against humanity to punish communities supporting rebels, as monitors reported a spate of car bombs and clashes which killed dozens more people.

The London-based rights group called for an international response after claiming it had fresh evidence that victims, including children, had been dragged from their homes and shot dead by soldiers, who in some cases then set the remains on fire.

“This disturbing new evidence of an organised pattern of grave abuses highlights the pressing need for decisive international action,” said Amnesty's Donatella Rovera on the release of the 70-page report entitled Deadly Reprisals.

The advocacy group interviewed people in 23 towns and villages across Syria and concluded that government forces and militias were guilty of “grave human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law amounting to crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

The report comes a day after the government said it had “cleansed terrorists” from Al-Haffe, a Sunni enclave in northwest Syria that had been a bastion of the rebel Free Syrian Army, and as monitors reported more than 80 people killed since Wednesday.

A car bomb in Idlib city in northwestern Syria early Thursday targeted a military checkpoint, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that a number of soldiers were killed or wounded in the blast.

No further details were immediately available.

In Damascus, a car bomb exploded early morning in a suburb that houses a popular Shiite shrine, wounding two people, Syrian state media reported.

The blast in the Sayyida Zeinab neighbourhood occurred near the Sadr hospital, leaving a large crater and damaging vehicles.

State news agency SANA said the booby-trapped vehicle was parked in a garage. It gave an initial toll of two people wounded.

The Observatory said meanwhile that clashes between regime troops and rebels erupted early morning in the central city of Homs, where four people were killed before dawn, including three civilians and a rebel fighter.

Ahmed Bahbouh, the head of the rebel military office in Rastan and a leading dissident figure, was killed in violent clashes with government forces in Homs province, the watchdog added.

And a civilian was killed in crossfire as rebel fighters and government troops clashed at the entrances of the rebel-held town, which the regime has been trying to overrun for months.

In the southern city of Daraa, five people were killed before dawn, including four in the neighbourhood of Tareek al-Sad which was heavily shelled by regime troops, the Observatory said.

At least 77 people were killed across Syria on Wednesday, including 49 civilians, 21 soldiers and seven rebels, the watchdog said.

Well over 14,000 people have been killed in the 15-month revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, the majority of them civilians, according to the Observatory.