“Syria cannot afford a return to larger-scale fighting, but that is where it may be heading,” Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, chair of the UN’s Syria commission, said on Wednesday.

The 50-page report released on Wednesday indicates that although many areas that were once hotbeds of hostilities have become more peaceful in recent years, but unrest increased across the country in the last six months.

The conflict in Syria since 2011 has left hundreds of thousands of people dead and millions homeless. Hostilities subsided after President Bashar al-Assad's government gained control of much of the country, pushing back the self-proclaimed "Islamic State" (IS) terrorist organization and rebel groups. However, in the first six months of 2022, violence in Syria showed signs of escalating.