Assad regime has killed 13,000 under torture, Syrian rights group says

Nearly 13,000 Syrians, including 108 children, have been tortured to death in Syrian regime’s prisons since the uprising began in March 2011, a monitoring group said Friday.

The head of the UK-based Observatory, Rami Abdel Rahman, said: "Some of the families of those killed under torture were forced to sign statements that their loved ones had been killed by rebel groups."

Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that the toll did not include more than 20,000 detainees who have "disappeared" in government prisons and whose fate remains unknown.

The most notorious detention centers include those operated by Syria's Air Force Intelligence and Military Intelligence services.

In total, an estimated 200,000 people have been arrested over the past four years, according to the group.

Security officials starve detainees to death, deny medicine to sick prisoners and subject them to psychological torture, Abdel Rahman said.

He said those arrested include political activists, rebels and regular demonstrators.

The clerical regime in Iran is the main supporter of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

The regime’s Revolutionary Guards and Lebanese Hezbollah, as well as Afghan mercenaries dispatched from Iran, have been fighting for Assad in Syria.