Turkey's Erdogan says U.N. must decide on any Syria no-fly zone

Rights activists have found torture devices and other evidence of abuse in government prisons in the first Syrian city to fall to the rebels, Human Rights Watch said in a report Friday.                   

Raqqa, in eastern Syria, was overrun in late February by rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad. The rebels facilitated the New York-based group's access to facilities that had belonged to a security agency and military intelligence in late April.                     

In a report Friday, the HRW said its researchers found physical evidence indicating Syrians were tortured in cells in detention facilities inspected, including with a device which former detainees said was used to stretch or bend victims' arms and legs. The group also found documents indicating Raqqa residents were detained for legal actions like demonstrating or helping the injured.                           

Rights groups and opposition activists have long claimed that civilians have been detained arbitrarily, tortured, and sometimes have disappeared since uprising against Assad's regime began. HRW's findings detailed in a report Friday appear to be one of the largest finds of physical evidence bolstering those claims to date.                         

HRW has been documenting abuses on both sides of Syria's civil war during the 26 months of conflict.                       

The group says abuses by the Assad regime remain far more deadly, systematic and widespread, including on civilians with indiscriminate battlefield weapons such as widely banned cluster bombs. But the rights group also says rebel abuses have increased in frequency and scale in recent months.
               
Positions:

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday it would be up to the United Nations Security Council to decide whether to establish a no-fly zone inside Syria.         

"It is not a decision that could be taken between the United States and Turkey. It is something that would have to come through the U.N. Security Council," Erdogan said in a discussion at the Brookings Institution.

For his part, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said a proposed international conference on Syria should be held as soon as possible but that no date had yet been agreed.    

"We should not lose the momentum," generated by the US - Russian proposal to bring the Syrian government and opposition representatives to a peace conference, Ban said after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

On Thursday, the Obama administration has added four Syrian government ministers to a US terror blacklist as well as the leader of an al-Qaida-linked organization fighting President Bashar Assad's regime.                    

Thursday's actions highlight America's twin goals in Syria: It wants the Assad regime to end but doesn't want extremists taking power.                  

The Treasury Department targeted the defense, health, industry and justice ministers in Assad's government, plus a Syrian TV station and its national airline. Assets they have in the US are blocked; Americans are prohibited from doing business with them.                          

Meanwhile, the State Department designated Jabhat al-Nusra leader Muhammad al-Jawlani as a "global terrorist," subjecting him to similar sanctions.                    

It said al-Jawlani aims to create an Islamist state in Syria, and it blamed him for terrorist attacks on civilians.

UNHCR report on Syrian refugees

On another note, the number of Syrian refugees registered or awaiting registration has surpassed 1.5 million, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday.    

"The fact that more than 1.5 million have registered or have appointments with UNHCR sadly means the actual number is much higher," UNHCR said in a statement issued in Geneva.    

"Refugees tell us the increased fighting and changing of control of towns and villages, in particular in conflict areas, results in more and more civilians deciding to leave," it said.         


UN peacekeepers abduction

Armed men broke into a UN outpost in a buffer zone separating Israel and Syria and abducted three UN military observers, the UN peacekeeping chief said Thursday.                  

Herve Ladsous told a group of reporters that the unarmed observers were held by the Syrian men for about five hours and released unharmed Wednesday morning.                       

It was the third abduction of UN peacekeepers in the tense region since March and underlined again their vulnerability in the spillover of the conflict in Syria, which is now in its third year.                             

The UN Security Council strongly condemned the abduction of the three observers by "a group of anti-government armed elements" who also looted the observation post. In a statement Thursday evening, the council called on all Syrian parties to cooperate with UN peacekeepers, ensure their security, and enable them to operate freely.                            

They were released unharmed about five hours later and returned safely to the observation post, where they were met by the head of the UN Disengagement Observer Force, known as UNDOF, Ladsous said.                   

The first abduction  of 21 Filipino peacekeepers from UNDOF  on March 6 was by the Syrian rebel group, the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade, which held them for three days. Another group of four Filipino peacekeepers from UNDOF was abducted by the Yarmouk rebels on May 7 and released Sunday.                



REUTERS/AP