Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says Syria's alleged torture and killing of a 13-year-old boy underscores that the Syrian government is making no effort to institute real reforms.
She says she hopes the child didn't die in vain, and that President Bashar Assad's regime ends its brutal crackdown.
The killing has outraged Syrians since images of the body appeared on YouTube.
Syria's government hasn't addressed the claims by an opposition group that its security forces were responsible for the death.
Clinton told reporters Tuesday that the boy's death symbolizes the ``total collapse of any effort by the Syrian government to work with and listen to their own people.''
Human rights groups say more than 1,000 people have been killed in unrest in Syria since mid-March.
The New York Times reported on Monday that an online video showed a 13-year-old boy, arrested at a protest on April 29, who it said had been tortured, mutilated and killed before his body was returned to his family.
"I can only hope that this child did not die in vain but that the Syrian government will end the brutality and begin a transition to real democracy," Clinton told a news conference.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has sought to crush 10 weeks of protests against his 11-year reign with a military crackdown in which rights campaigners say 1,000 civilians have been killed and more than 10,000 people arrested.
Activists said at least five people were killed on Tuesday when tanks shelled the central town of Rastan and security forces stormed Hirak, a town in the southern Hauran Plain where the uprising first broke out in mid-March.
Syria blames the violence on armed groups, Islamists and foreign agitators, saying more than 120 police and soldiers have been killed in the unrest nationwide.
Syrian state television said Assad had issued a "general amnesty" for all members of political parties but the United States dismissed this, as it has other moves such as his lifting of a state of emergency, as talk without action.
"He has talked reform but we have seen very little in the way of action," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said at his daily briefing. "He needs to take steps -- concrete steps, not rhetoric -- to address what is going on in the country."
Source: YonHap News
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