In Syria, at least 100 killed in attacks as more people flee

Airstrikes in Syria killed more than 100 people on Friday as civilians, weary and many wounded, fled besieged areas for the second straight day.

Syrian government forces stepped up their offensive in the rebel-held eastern suburbs of the capital, Damascus, capturing a major town and closing in on another under the cover of Russia's air power.

This photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows Syrian troops stand guard near buses carrying Syrian citizens who were fleeing from fighting between the Syrian government forces and rebels, near Hamouria in eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, Syria, Friday, March. 16, 2018. The government offensive has pushed further into eastern Ghouta, chipping away at one of the largest and most significant opposition bastions since the early days of the rebellion, communities where some 400,000 people are estimated to be holed up. (SANA via AP)

The majority of the deaths occurred in eastern Ghouta, where government forces have been on a crushing offensive for three weeks, capturing 70 percent of the besieged area. The weekslong violence has left more than 1,300 civilians dead, 5,000 wounded and forced thousands to flee to government-controlled areas.

Friday's staggering death toll came a day after Syria passed the seven-year mark in its relentless civil war that has killed some 450,000 people and displaced half the country's population.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said bombing and shelling by government and Russian forces killed a total of 76 people in eastern Ghouta, including 64 killed in Kafr Batna and another 12 in Saqba. Government forces also captured the nearby town of Jisreen, it said.

"If the world does not move, Ghouta will be exterminated," said Siraj Mahmoud, a member of the opposition's Syrian Civil Defense search-and-rescue group.

The Observatory said another 36 people were killed in the Kurdish-held town of Afrin in northern Syria, where Turkish troops and Turkey-backed Syrian opposition fighters have been on the offensive since Jan. 20. The dead included nine killed in airstrikes that hit the town's general hospital.

This photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows Syrian civilians with their belongings as they flee from fighting between the Syrian government forces and rebels, near Hamouria in eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, Syria, Friday, March. 16, 2018. The government offensive has pushed further into eastern Ghouta, chipping away at one of the largest and most significant opposition bastions since the early days of the rebellion, communities where some 400,000 people are estimated to be holed up. (SANA via AP)

Friday's government attack on Kafr Batna was with cluster bombs, napalm-like incendiary weapons, and conventional explosives, the Observatory said.

Photos and videos released from the area showed charred bodies covered with sheets lined up near what appeared to be shops.

A medical charity supporting hospitals in eastern Ghouta, the Syrian American Medical Society, said doctors in Kafr Batna were treating patients for severe burn wounds.

Oways al-Shami, a spokesman for the Syrian Civil Defense, said the airstrikes targeted a market and a nearby residential area where scores of people had gathered to buy bread and vegetables during a daily truce called by Russia.

"The medical situation is catastrophic. We can't stay in this situation for long," said Dr. Zouhair Kahaleh in the nearby town of Arbeen. Roads were closed, he said, and "we can't treat some of the cases here. It's a major challenge to reach the wounded because of the intensity of the airstrikes."

Exhausted and shell-shocked civilians streamed out of the rebel enclave Friday, a day after tens of thousands evacuated the area in the biggest single-day exodus of the war.

This photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows Syrian troops stand guard as civilians stand with their belongings after fleeing from fighting between the Syrian government forces and rebels, near Hamouria in eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, Syria, Friday, March. 16, 2018. The government offensive has pushed further into eastern Ghouta, chipping away at one of the largest and most significant opposition bastions since the early days of the rebellion _ communities where some 400,000 people are estimated to be holed up. (SANA via AP)

Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari told the U.N. Security Council that more than 40,000 civilians left eastern Ghouta on Thursday through a new security corridor opened by the government in the recently retaken town of Hamouria. An additional 30,000 people fled the Turkish military offensive on Afrin, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

A man interviewed in Hamouria Friday on state-affiliated al-Ikhbariya TV said he had gone two days without food. Others said rebels hoarded food and humiliated civilians, even shooting people trying to leave.

The United Nations has warned of a malnutrition crisis in eastern Ghouta, which human rights groups have blamed on the government's strangling blockade.

Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. envoy for Syria, told the Security Council that although a six-day cease-fire was largely holding in Douma, the largest city in eastern Ghouta, fighting has escalated elsewhere in the rebel-held region where 400,000 people are estimated to be holed up, as well as in Afrin and across many other parts of Syria.

In Afrin, the Turkish military urged civilians to leave and Syrian Kurdish militiamen to surrender to the besieging Turkish forces.

This photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows Syrian civilians with their belongings as they flee from fighting between the Syrian government forces and rebels, near Hamouria in eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, Syria, Friday, March. 16, 2018. The government offensive has pushed further into eastern Ghouta, chipping away at one of the largest and most significant opposition bastions since the early days of the rebellion, communities where some 400,000 people are estimated to be holed up. (SANA via AP)

The media office for the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed force that operates in the Kurdish autonomous region, said at least 30 people were wounded in Friday's attacks.

Video posted by the Observatory showed victims lying dead in the streets in pools of blood.

Since their January offensive began, Turkish forces have nearly encircled Afrin as they press their campaign to drive the Syrian Kurdish fighters from the town and surrounding region, where tens of thousands of civilians are still believed trapped.

On Friday, Turkish aircraft dropped flyers in Arabic and Kurdish on Afrin, asking residents to stay away from "terrorist positions" — a reference to the Syrian Kurdish fighters — and to not let themselves be used as "human shields."

The leaflets claimed that civilians seeking to flee Afrin would be guaranteed safety by the Turkish military and urged Syrian Kurdish fighters to "trust the hand we extend to you."

"Come surrender! A calm and peaceful future awaits you in Afrin," the leaflets read.

Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council again demanded a cease-fire throughout Syria and backed a U.N.-endorsed roadmap for a peaceful transition and elections. Members reaffirmed that U.N.-led talks in Geneva "remain the central process to find a political solution."

Mistura, the U.N. envoy for Syria, told the council that he hasn't been able to form a committee to draft a new constitution because President Bashar Assad's government hasn't engaged and "we need to have comprehensive participation of all Syrian parties."

Ministers from Russia, Turkey and Iran also underscored the need for a political solution in a joint statement after a meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Friday and urged international support for de Mistura's efforts to form a constitutional committee.

BEIRUT (AP) — Amnesty International said Wednesday it has documented widespread abuses, including torture and deprivation of medical care, in detention facilities holding thousands of suspected Islamic State members and their relatives in northeast Syria.

The centers and camps hold about 56,000 people — the majority of them children and teens — and are run by local authorities affiliated with the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. The SDF and its allies, including U.S.-led coalition forces, defeated the Islamic State group in Syria in 2019, ending its self-proclaimed Islamic “caliphate” that had ruled over a large swath of territory straddling Iraq and Syria.

What to do with the suspected IS fighters and their families has become an intractable issue. Many countries whose citizens traveled to Syria to join IS have been reluctant to repatriate them, as have local communities in Syria.

"People held in this system are facing large-scale violations of their rights, some of which amount to war crimes,” Nicolette Waldman, Amnesty’s senior crisis advisor, told journalists.

The United States is also responsible for the alleged violations because it played a key role in establishing and maintaining the detention system, providing hundreds of millions of dollars to the SDF and affiliated forces and regularly interrogating detainees, Waldman said.

The human rights group interviewed 126 people accused of IS affiliation currently or formerly detained, along with representatives of the local administration and aid workers.

The Amnesty report said the vast majority of detainees are being held “indefinitely, without charge or trial, in violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law,” while those who have been tried were, in many cases, convicted on the basis of confessions extracted under torture.

The alleged abuses include “beating, stress positions, drowning, electric shocks and gender-based violence,” including a male detainee who said he and others had been sodomized with broomsticks by guards, the report said. Detainees were also deprived of food, water and medical care and subjected to extreme cold and heat in overcrowded cells, with some allegedly dying of suffocation, it said.

The report added that many of the approximately 14,500 women and 30,000 children held had been victims of human trafficking, including women who were forced to marry IS fighters and minors who were forcibly recruited by the group, and that local authorities had failed to set up a “mechanism to identify trafficking victims” and protect them.

The report also criticized the practice of forcibly separating adolescent boys — some as young as 11 or 12 — from their mothers and placing them in rehabilitation centers indefinitely.

Amnesty called on local authorities, the U.S. government and other allies to bring the detention system into compliance with international law and urged the United Nations to work with them to establish a screening process to release all who are not “reasonably suspected” of having committed a serious crime.

The Autonomous Authorities of the North and East Syria Region, the civilian administration affiliated with the SDF, wrote in response to the Amnesty findings that it had not received any official complaints regarding torture in detention facilities and “if this happened, they are individual acts.”

The administration said it would take action against employees who committed violations if evidence is provided. It denied allegations that inmates were deprived of food, water and medical care. It acknowledged overcrowding in the facilities, which it attributed to lack of financial resources to secure larger centers.

The local authorities took issue with the allegation that people were arbitrarily detained, asserting that most detainees “are members of a terrorist organization and were arrested during the battles" and that many had committed crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The U.S. State Department said in its own response that “we share many of (Amnesty’s) concerns” and it has been working to address them. It called on the international community to “aid local entities’ management of these challenges” and for countries with citizens held in detention in Syria to repatriate them.

Waldman said she believes Washington "very likely knew about these poor conditions from the beginning."

She added: “We think that it may not be the case that they are doing everything they can. They need to accept a much greater responsibility, especially since they played such a key role in establishing the situation in the first place."

FILE - Kurdish forces patrol al-Hol camp, which houses families of members of the Islamic State group in Hasakeh province, Syria, on April 19, 2023. Amnesty International said Wednesday, April 17, 2024 it has documented widespread abuses, including torture and deprivation of medical care, in detention facilities holding thousands of suspected Islamic State members and their relatives in northeast Syria. (AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad, File)

FILE - Women residents from former Islamic State-held areas in Syria line up for aid supplies at Al-Hol camp in Hassakeh province, Syria, March 31, 2019. Amnesty International said Wednesday, April 17, 2024 it has documented widespread abuses, including torture and deprivation of medical care, in detention facilities holding thousands of suspected Islamic State members and their relatives in northeast Syria. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File)