Major wreckage at hospital hit by artillery in north Syria

The death toll from an artillery strike on a hospital in northern Syria has risen to at least 15, medical officials said Sunday. The shelling, a day earlier, caused widespread destruction and knocked out the hospital’s maternity ward and surgery unit.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack that also wounded 43 and came from areas where both government troops and Kurdish-led fighters are deployed.

Al-Shifaa hospital is in the northern town of Afrin, in an area controlled by Turkey-backed Syrian opposition fighters. Much of the ceiling of the facility collapsed, and electricity cables dangled in a main corridor. The delivery room, the children's section, and the first aid hall suffered the most — leaving hospital beds covered with rubble.

A man walks through a heavily damaged hospital in the city of Afrin, Syria, Sunday, June 13, 2021. Shells have hit the hosptal Saturday, killing at least 13 people, including two medical staff and two ambulance drivers. It was not immediately clear who was behind the shelling, which came from areas where government troops and Kurdish-led fighters are deployed. (AP PhotoGhaith Alsayed)

Blood stained the floor of one debris-filled room, while a mangled wheelchair and a soiled stretcher were piled up in an operating theater.

The hospital director, Dr. Hussam Adnan, said two shells damaged the maternity ward and the surgery unit, while a rocket hit the clinics. The hospital had been crowded at the time of the shelling, and patients and the wounded were evacuated to other hospitals.

“This was a condemned terrorist act that targeted civilians," said Adnan, adding that the hospital serves the town of Afrin and its countryside, an area home to about 350,000 people. Over 350 births take place every month at the hospital, all free of charge, he said.

A heavily damaged hospital is seen in the city of Afrin, Syria, Sunday, June 13, 2021. Shells have hit the hospital Saturday, killing at least 13 people, including two medical staff and two ambulance drivers. It was not immediately clear who was behind the shelling, which came from areas where government troops and Kurdish-led fighters are deployed. (AP PhotoGhaith Alsayed)

Adnan and the Syrian American Medical Association — an aid group that assists health centers in opposition areas — said two hospital staff members were killed. SAMS also said 11 of its staff were injured, including a midwife seriously.

SAMS called for an investigation into the attack, adding that the coordinates for the hospital, also financed by USAID and the United Nations, had been shared as part of a U.N.-led mechanism to unwind the conflict.

On Saturday, the governor of Turkey’s Hatay’s province blamed the attack on Syrian Kurdish groups. The U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces strongly denied claims that it was behind the shelling.

A heavily damaged hospital is seen in the city of Afrin, Syria, Sunday, June 13, 2021. Shells have hit the hospital Saturday, killing at least 13 people, including two medical staff and two ambulance drivers. It was not immediately clear who was behind the shelling, which came from areas where government troops and Kurdish-led fighters are deployed. (AP PhotoGhaith Alsayed)

Turkey and allied Syrian fighters took control of Afrin in 2018 in an operation that expelled local Kurdish fighters and displaced thousands of Kurdish residents. Ankara considers the Kurdish fighters who were in control of Afrin to be terrorists. Since then, there have been several attacks on Turkish targets in the area.

A heavily damaged hospital is seen in the city of Afrin, Syria, Sunday, June 13, 2021. Shells have hit the hospital Saturday, killing at least 13 people, including two medical staff and two ambulance drivers. It was not immediately clear who was behind the shelling, which came from areas where government troops and Kurdish-led fighters are deployed. (AP PhotoGhaith Alsayed)

A heavily damaged hospital is seen in the city of Afrin, Syria, Sunday, June 13, 2021. Shells have hit the hospital Saturday, killing at least 13 people, including two medical staff and two ambulance drivers. It was not immediately clear who was behind the shelling, which came from areas where government troops and Kurdish-led fighters are deployed. (AP PhotoGhaith Alsayed)

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)