The UN’s human rights chief cited the killing of at least 307 children since March to urge world powers to refer these and other allegations of Syrian “crimes against humanity” to the International Criminal Court.

Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said fresh reports from the country — including the updated death toll for children from less than a week ago — reinforced the need for the Security Council to submit the situation in Syria to the Hague-based court.

“In light of the manifest failure of the Syrian authorities to protect their citizens, the international community needs to take urgent and effective measures to protect the Syrian people,” Pillay told an emergency meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

A draft resolution backed by African, European, Asian, Arab and American members of the 47-nation rights council calls for the establishment of a special investigator on Syria, but leaves open the issue of whether the Security Council, the UN’s most powerful arm, should refer the country to the ICC.

Col. Riad Al-Asaad told Reuters that fighters from the Syrian Free Army, a loose collection of military units formed from thousands of military deserters, had improved their reconnaissance ability to enable them to disrupt army movements.

In the last month, army rebels have attacked and destroyed parts of an armored convoy in the southern province of Deraa, opened fire on an intelligence center on the outskirts of Damascus, and killed six pilots at an air force base.

On Thursday they killed eight people in a three-hour battle with security forces at an intelligence center in the northern province of Idlib, an activist group said.

Col. Asaad said the increased attacks were in response to Assad’s military crackdown on eight months of protests. “For months now regime forces have not entered a city, town or village without using heavy guns, armor and tanks against their inhabitants. We have a right to stop the troops going to violate the people,” Asaad said in an interview, speaking by telephone from Turkey where he has taken refuge.

Meanwhile in an article published in the Wall street Journal, Syrian National Council leader asserted that a Syria run by the group would cut military ties to Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.

This would remove a crucial Iranian military ally believed to play a key role in supplying arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon and backing the Palestinian Hamas, potentially leading to a dramatic reordering of regional power.

The interview with Burhan Ghalioun, president of the SNC, came with rebels seeking international support.

“There will be no special relationship with Iran,” Ghalioun, a 66-year-old university professor, told the Journal in an interview at his home in Paris.

“Breaking the exceptional relationship means breaking the strategic, military alliance,” he said, adding that “after the fall of the Syrian regime, (Hezbollah) won’t be the same.”

He also called for more robust international support for the rebels, including the possible establishment of a no-fly zone.

Ghalioun said an opposition-run Syria would be committed to recovering the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau captured by Israel in the 1967 war, but would pursue its return through negotiations rather than armed conflict.

He also said it would work to normalize relations with neighboring Lebanon after decades of tense relations.