29 May, 2017
WASHINGTON-The Syrian regime has built a crematorium 45 minutes outside of Damascus where the USA government believes they are burning the bodies of the thousands of prisoners executed inside the walls of the Saydnaya military prison, an institution nicknamed "the slaughterhouse".
The US State Department has said it has evidence that Bashar al-Assad's regime is hiding mass killings.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry dismissed these allegations as "lies" and "fabrications" and accused the us of seeking a pretext for military aggression.
Yesterday's disclosures amount to a very public rebuke of Russian Federation, which surely must know of the mass atrocities being committed by its client state just as it knew about the existence of chemical weapons. The claims, however, persisted leading up to Monday's release of the US State Department's satellite images.
Western monitors and watchdog groups say they have accumulated evidence of mass killings in Syrian government prisons, though there have not been any substantiated allegations so far of the use of a crematorium.
"These atrocities have been carried out seemingly with the unconditional support from Russian Federation and Iran", Mr Jones said.
Syria's foreign ministry called the USA accusation a "Hollywood story detached from reality".
An Israeli minister says Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is to blame for the sufferings of the Arab state and should be assassinated, a day after the U.S. leveled fresh allegations against the Damascus government. It says the crematorium is being used to hide evidence of the extent of the killings.
Jones showed a series of aerial photos taken from 2013 to 2017 that he said showed the construction of a crematorium beside the infamous prison.
The prison is believed to kill at least 50 detainees a day often by mass hangings, acting assistant Secretary for Middle Eastern Affairs Stuart Jones briefed reporters on Monday.
A probe by the United Nations previous year accused Assad's government of a policy of "extermination" in its jails.
He did not 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.
The Syrian government has constructed and is using a crematorium inside its notorious Sednaya military prison outside Damascus to clandestinely dispose of thousands of prisoners it continues to execute inside the facility.
Outside of prisons, Assad's regime been known to hammer cities like Aleppo with airstrikes, launch chemical-weapon attacks, starve civilians, commit sexual violence and deny services like water and medical care, Jones noted.
In a photo taken January 15, he said, "we're look [ing] at snowmelt on the roof that would be consistent with a crematorium".
Jones also said he was not optimistic about a Russia-brokered deal to set up "de-escalation zones" inside Syria. Meanwhile, a new round of Syria peace talks opened on May 16 in Geneva, the latest United Nations push to resolve the conflict.
