US-led strike kills 23 civilians in Syria
 

Assad using ‘crematorium’ to hide mass killings

BEIRUT: A US-led coalition air strike on Monday killed 23 civilians in a Syrian town held by the Islamic State group on the border with Iraq, a monitor said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike on the town of Albu Kamal hit around 3:00 am local time.

The monitor said some of those killed in the strike were civilians displaced from other areas controlled by IS, including Syria’s Deir Ezzor and Raqa provinces, and neighbouring Iraq.

The deaths came after a**ther strike by the US-led coalition in Raqa province on Sunday that killed 12 women, the monitor said.

Meanwhile, the Syrian regime has installed a crematorium in a military prison in order to destroy the remains of thousands of murdered prisoners, the United States alleged on Monday.

Stuart Jones, acting assistant secretary for the State Department Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, gave reporters satellite pictures apparently showing s**w melting on the roof of the facility.

"Beginning in 2013, the Syrian regime modified a building within the Saydnaya complex to support what we believe is a crematorium," he said, referring to a military jail **rth of Damascus.

"Although the regime’s many atrocities are well documented, we believe that the building of a crematorium is an effort to cover up the extent of the mass murders taking place in Saydnaya."

Jones said Washington’s information came from credible humanitarian agencies and from the US "intelligence community" and that as many as 50 people per day are thought to be hanged at Saydnaya.

He did **t give an official estimate for the total number killed, but cited an Amnesty International report that between 5,000 and 11,000 had died between 2011 and 2015 in the prison.

President Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime, he alleged, had detained between 65,000 and 117,000 people over the same period.

The latest satellite photograph presented by Jones dated to January 2015, more than two years ago, and it was **t immediately clear why the United States waited to present its evidence.

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