Syrian government and Russian airstrikes pounded the southern edge of a rebel stronghold in the country's northwest on Saturday, killing at least seven members of one family, activists and a war monitor reported.
The intense airstrikes were coupled with fierce ground clashes as the Syrian government, backed by Russia, pushed ahead with a months-old offensive seeking to chip away at territory on the periphery of the rebel enclave.
Idlib and surrounding areas are home to 3 million civilians and is dominated by Islamist insurgents.
This photo provided by the Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows Syrian White Helmet civil defense workers search for victims from under the rubble of a destroyed building that hit by airstrikes, in Deir al-Sharqi village, in Idlib province, Syria, Saturday, Aug 17, 2019. Syrian activists and a war monitor say airstrikes have pounded the southern edge of a rebel stronghold in the country's northwest, in one instance killing seven including children. (Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via AP)
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a woman and her six children were killed in an airstrike that hit their home in Deir al-Sharqi village in southern Idlib. Rami Abdurrahman, the head of the Observatory, said the children were all under 18 years old. Their father survived because he was not home at the time of the airstrike.
The activist-operated Thiqa news agency also reported the casualties and showed images of rescuers attempting to lift the body of a young boy trapped under the rubble.
Syria's Civil Defense, a volunteer rescue group also known as the White Helmets, said the village of Deir al-Sharqi was hit with four airstrikes that resulted in the killing of the Hammoud family.
This photo provided by the Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows a Civil Defense worker searching for victims from under the rubble of a destroyed building that hit by airstrikes, in Deir al-Sharqi village, in Idlib province, Syria, Saturday, Aug 17, 2019. Syrian activists and a war monitor say airstrikes have pounded the southern edge of a rebel stronghold in the country's northwest, in one instance killing seven including children. (Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via AP)
A volunteer from the group, which operates in opposition areas, said the intense airstrikes hit a main highway in southern Idlib, and that a rescue team came under attack as they were putting out a fire caused by one of the strikes.
By early afternoon Saturday, the Civil Defense team had recorded 31 strikes, including 18 suspected Russian airstrikes.
Thiqa news agency said the barrage of airstrikes sparked a new wave of displacement inside the enclave. Residents have been moving toward safer areas near the border with Turkey.
This photo provided by the Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows Syrian White Helmet civil defense workers search for victims from under the rubble of a destroyed building that hit by airstrikes, in Deir al-Sharqi village, in Idlib province, Syria, Saturday, Aug 17, 2019. Syrian activists and a war monitor say airstrikes have pounded the southern edge of a rebel stronghold in the country's northwest, in one instance killing seven including children. (Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via AP)
Overnight airstrikes in the town of Hass hit a gathering of civilians who had escaped the violence further south, killing at least 13, also including children.
The United Nations has been calling for respecting the lives of civilians as well as medical and humanitarian workers, saying that the death toll is "rising every day."
In the past three and half months, the U.N. documented 500 civilian deaths and said 42 attacks on health care facilities were reported. The U.N. said a paramedic and an ambulance driver were killed in airstrikes Wednesday.
The Idlib stronghold sits on the Turkish border and is surrounded by government and Turkish-controlled areas. Already more than 450,000 people have been displaced inside the rebel-controlled area by the fighting, which began April 30.
Syrian troops, backed by Russia, have intensified their military push in recent days, advancing into the territory and gaining control of a number of villages on the southern edge.
State media reported that Syrian troops killed over two dozen rebel fighters in southern Idlib on Saturday during clashes.
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)
