Syrian forces executing and buring residents of Idlib, Amnesty says

Report gathers harrowing testimony of victims and families caught in purge of northern city by regime troops and loyalists


 The Amnesty report, prepared by senior crisis adviser Donatella Rovera, gathered harrowing testimonies of victims and their families


A woman whose house was set alight on 11 March was allegedly told that it was pointless reporting the incident unless she blamed terrorists.

"The neighbours saw it was military security members who attacked my house," she told Amnesty. "It was the middle of the day and there were tanks and soldiers and security force members everywhere in the area – how on Earth could this have been the doing of armed groups? So I did not lodge a complaint."

 "Soldiers came to our home and took my son. Later, as I was peering out of the window I saw soldiers line up eight young men standing facing the wall with their hands tied at the back and shoot them. Then they put the bodies in the back of a pick-up truck and left. I don't know if the men were all dead or injured. At that point I did not know that one of the men was my son. His body was found with other bodies at a school not too far from our home."

 A relative of another man, who was also killed that day told me: "Members of the military security came to the house of our relatives, where we were staying and asked for our ID and did not find any problem; we were not wanted. Then one of the soldiers looked at my relative's cell phone and found a pro-revolution song. They took him outside … A neighbour told me the soldiers had shot him and then taken him to a nearby house; I went there and found him injured. He had been shot in the ear and neck but was still breathing. Some neighbours helped to carry him to the car and three of them took him to a field hospital (normal hospitals have long been out of bounds to people injured by the army/security forces) but on the way there they were stopped by soldiers and were killed. Their bodies were later found at a school, except the body of my relative who had been taken back to the house where he had previously been left for dead. They had finished him off with an additional shot to the head."