AMMAN: Syrian troops bombarded a town near Damascus yesterday and fighting raged in and around the northern city of Aleppo, a day before a proposed truce for a four-day Eid Al-Adha holiday.

Syrian troops pounded Harasta, near Damascus, with tank and rocket fire, killing five people, after rebels overran two army roadblocks on the edge of the town, on the main highway from the capital to the north, opposition campaigners said.

Rebels tried to maintain pressure on two army bases on main roads leading to the contested city of Aleppo. “No one is taking the cease-fire seriously,” said Moaz Al-Shami, an opposition activist in Damascus.

“How can there be a cease-fire with tanks roaming the streets, roadblocks every few hundred meters and the army having no qualms about hitting civilian neighborhoods with heavy artillery? This is a regime that has lost all credibility.”

Even if Assad accepts a truce, there may be no unified response from Syria’s fractured opposition. Some armed groups have said they will abide by a cease-fire. Others, including radical Al Nusra Front, have rejected it.

In Aleppo, where opposition activists reported more fighting and shelling, the rebel Shining Aleppo Division said it would observe the cease-fire despite “doubts over the credibility of the regime” if Assad stopped moving armored units, halted air raids and released thousands of prisoners held without trial.

“Harasta is being pummeled by tanks and rocket launchers deployed on the highway. The rebels are putting up a fight and it does not seem the army will be able to enter the town this time,” said a Damascus resident.

Assad’s force pushed into Harasta a month ago in an operation which opposition activists said killed 70 people. In Harasta, an opposition group described the town as a “disaster zone” after the shelling. “An (army) roadblock had been set up next to the main bakery. There is no water, no food, no medicine and prolonged power cuts,” it said in a statement.

Crimes against humanity are taking place, UN rights investigators said yesterday as they vowed to identify those behind the atrocities and seek a meeting with Assad.

One of the newest members of the four-person team, renowned former war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte, told reporters in Geneva that without a doubt “crimes against humanity and war crimes” were being committed in Syria.

Del Ponte, who was yanked out of retirement late last month to join the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said she would participate in the general investigation of tracking and documenting serious rights violations, but that she would mainly focus on determining “the high-ranking political and military figures (responsible for) these crimes.”