UN probe finds detainees 'extermination' in Syria

Protesters in Aleppo called for the release of prisoners in government-run jails in January

Report covering 2011-15 period urges targeted sanctions against individuals and groups guilty of "unimaginable abuses".

International investigators have said several thousand detainees have been executed, beaten to death or otherwise left to die during Syria's civil war, in policies that appear to amount to "extermination" under international law.
The UN-backed Commission of Inquiry on Syria presented a 25-page report on Monday on killings of detainees by President Bashar al-Assad's government.
The report is drawn from 621 interviews conducted between March 2011 and November 2015.
Investigators say they are short of enough evidence to provide more specific estimates of killings of those detained.

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The report seeks "targeted sanctions" against unspecified individuals or groups responsible for such crimes.
The investigators lamented inaction by the UN Security Council about possibly launching criminal probes.
The findings painted a stark picture of prisons and detention centres run by the Syrian authorities.
"The mass scale of deaths of detainees suggests that the government of Syria is responsible for acts that amount to extermination as a crime against humanity," Paulo Pinheiro, the commission's head, said.
Pinheiro described how people held in governmental detention centres were "subjected to violations on a mass scale".
He said "prisoners are routinely tortured and beaten, forced to live in unsanitary and overcrowded cells, [and] with little food and no medical care many perish".
"Nearly every surviving detainee has emerged from custody having suffered unimaginable abuses," he said.