Region

UNITED NATIONS — Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday criticised Israel for the death and suffering of Palestinian children during last summer's conflict in Gaza, reiterating his demand for the Israeli government to take immediate steps to prevent such killings.

The UN chief didn't address the reasoning behind his decision last week not to include Israel on his annual list of parties that kill or injure children in armed conflict in a speech to a Security Council meeting. That decision sparked protests from human rights groups and many in the Arab world and elsewhere.

The secretary general's latest report said that in the Gaza conflict at least 561 children were killed — 557 of them Palestinians. It said 4,271 youngsters were injured, all but 22 Palestinians.

The 557 Palestinian deaths were the third-highest death toll of any conflict in 2014, after Afghanistan's with 710 child killings and Iraq's with 679 — but ahead of Syria's with 368.

While Ban kept Israel off the list, he kept up pressure on the Israeli government at the council meeting to present his report on children in armed conflict.

He expressed deep alarm at the Gaza killings and urged Israel to review its policies and practices and “respect the special protections afforded to schools and hospitals”.

In a letter to Ban circulated soon after his speech, Israel’s UN Ambassador Ron Prosor accused UN special envoy for children in armed conflict, Leila Zerrougui, who worked on Ban’s report, of “widespread, systematic and institutionalised biased conduct against Israel [which] undermines the credibility of the report”.

Prosor said Zerrougi and others drafting the report failed to hold Hamas responsible for launching thousands of rockets into Israel while using Palestinian civilians, including children, as human shields. He also criticized them for preventing Israel from verifying incidents in the report, for giving Israel very little time to comment before the report was finalised, and for ignoring or dismissing most of its remarks and requests.

Prosor called on the secretary general “to change these working methods to ensure a transparent and credible process in the future”.

Ban defended his report, saying the content “should speak for itself”.

He said a debate is appropriate “but national interests should not cloud the objective at stake, which is protecting children”.

Zerrougui also said she stood by the report. She told reporters that Israel has been included in the annual report since 2005, and the same working methods have been used and it never complained in the past.

BEIRUT — Syrian rebels advanced into a second government-held neighbourhood in the northern city of Aleppo on Thursday, activists said, a claim denied by state TV.

The reported push into the Khaldiyeh neighbourhood came a day after insurgents captured the eastern neighbourhood of Rashideen from troops and pro-government gunmen.

Aleppo, the country's largest city and former commercial capital, has seen heavy fighting since rebels seized part of the city in 2012. The recent push into government-held parts of Aleppo comes as President Bashar Assad's forces have suffered a series of setbacks in recent months, including the loss of Idlib, a northwestern provincial capital, in March.

Aleppo-based activists Ahmad Al Ahmad and Bahaa Halaby said several factions entered Khaldiyeh, which has a large Kurdish community, early Thursday.

State TV denied the claims and aired a report from Khaldiyeh. It had earlier denied the capture of Rashideen without providing any proof.

State TV and the activists said Rashideen was relatively quiet Wednesday afternoon after heavy fighting overnight.

Ahmad and Halaby said a fuel shortage in Aleppo and nearby villages has worsened in recent days after Daesh, which controls much of Syria's oil fields, prevented tanker trucks from supplying rebel-held neighbourhoods. Daesh has battled both government forces and the insurgents, but in Aleppo the rebels say it is effectively helping the government by attacking their supply lines.

Ahmad said the fuel shortages have driven up bread prices and caused power cuts in hospitals relying on generators.

"There is a humanitarian crisis. Some bakeries have closed and fewer vehicles are in the streets," Ahmad said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross meanwhile said Thursday that some 40,000 people are in "urgent need of basic services including water and electricity" in the Damascus suburb of Moadamiyeh. The ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent managed to enter Moadamiyeh this week to deliver aid for the first time since December, the statement said.

"The humanitarian situation is desperate," said the head of the ICRC in Syria, Marianne Gasser. "The streets are totally empty, shops closed. There is virtually no water and food is hard to come by. There has not been electricity in the city for two years. There is virtually no access to proper health care."

 The ICRC and SARC brought in medicines for chronic diseases to treat around 5,000 patients, medicines for children, and medical equipment to help pregnant women during delivery.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The Palestinians will next week submit their first file to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in their bid to open criminal proceedings against Israel, an official said on Thursday.

The move is part of an increased focus on diplomatic manoeuvring and appeals to international bodies by the Palestinians, who have been frustrated by a lack of progress in ending the Israeli occupation and creating their own independent state. 

The file is to be handed to ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on June 25,
and will detail alleged violations of international law by Israel, Palestinian foreign ministry official Ammar Hijazi told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

On April 1, the Palestinians formally joined the ICC with the goal of trying Israeli leaders for alleged abuses during last summer's war in the Gaza Strip, and alleged crimes relating to the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The file is "only general, it's only statistical", Hijazi said.

"But it certainly draws a grim picture of what Israel is doing and why we think that there are reasonable grounds... for the prosecutor to start [her] investigations."

It does not refer to specific incidents, but the Palestinians will submit such details in future if Bensouda decides to proceed with inquiries, he said.

Bensouda's office has opened a preliminary examination into Palestinian claims, starting from June 2014.

Earlier this year, as the Palestinians were putting their accession to the ICC in motion, president Mahmud Abbas sent documents to the court authorising the prosecutor to investigate alleged crimes that took place in Palestinian territories since June 13, 2014. 

The unrest in June last year escalated to the summer war between Israel and Hamas, which killed about 2,200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 73 on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers.

Bensouda has also said she is weighing opening war crimes investigations into the Palestinians themselves, with groups such as the Islamist movement Hamas, which rules Gaza, potentially under the spotlight.

Among the more controversial events of the Gaza war was Israel’s bombing of UN schools being used as shelters for the displaced.

Israel says it was forced to carry out the strikes because Hamas used them to store weapons or fire rockets at Israel.

The ICC, set up in 2002, is the world’s only permanent independent body to try the most serious crimes of concern to the international community.

Albu Nahadh, Iraq — Smoking, horn honking and political debating — these may sound like a few of Iraq's favourite things, but one village has banned them all to beat the national doom and gloom.

"Smoking just isn't good for you," said Kadhim Hassoon, standing proudly by a red-and-white crossed out cigarette sign marking the entrance of Albu Nahadh, a hamlet nestled along a river bank in the fertile heart of Iraq's south.

The ban is a bold step in a country where smoking in hospitals and lifts or at petrol stations is not uncommon.

Tobacco is also banned in areas held by the Daesh terror group, but that is really all Albu Nahadh has in common with the self-proclaimed caliphate that has brought Iraq to the brink of breakup.

"Religion has altered everything in this country. This is why one of our rules is no religious talk. Religion should be in your heart, something between you and God," said Hassoon, the driving force behind the Albu Nahadh utopia.

Iraq has been plagued by deadly sectarian violence for years and while the southern provinces have been largely spared jihadist attacks, thousands of its sons have gone to the front lines and never returned.

Farhan Hussein Ali, a medical doctor and professor, said it was Hassoon's father, Albu Nahadh's founding figure, who first saw the need for village ground rules decades ago.

"Under Saddam people kept quiet, but after his fall [in 2003], everyone began talking about politics again," Ali said, sitting cross-legged on a red cushion in the village meeting hall.

"He did not want any arguments and introduced the ban... to keep peace in our community," he said.

'Piece of Europe' 

The list of don'ts also includes selling soft drinks to children and using car horns, although no penalty is incurred for violating any of the rules.

The 46-year-old Hassoon is keen to portray his community project more as an attempt to become a modern ecovillage following global good practices than a closed mini-republic with quirky by-laws.

"I want this street to look like a piece of Europe," he said.

"On June 5, we planted 300 trees," he said, showing the row of young palm trees lining the main road. 

"How many other places in Iraq marked World Environment Day 2015?" he asked, referring to the annual UN event.

"It was a success. It may seem like nothing, but I can be from a small village and be part of the world. Let nobody tell me that my village cannot make a difference."

 It already has for Mustafa Jaber, a 28-year-old athlete and coach who found his life purpose when Hassoon made physical exercise a local obsession.

"Jogging is not in the culture. When I go on my daily run, people who don't know me still stop their cars to offer me a ride," said Hassoon.

Jaber also thought it a strange idea initially, but Hassoon convinced him to run with him and the young man soon displayed exceptional ability.

'This village is special' 

He has since amassed trophies in a number of national running and cycling events and the group of evening joggers from the village is growing steadily.

"This village is special because you have support like nowhere else in Iraq," he said, wearing a red-and-black tracksuit, his hair still drying off after his daily swim in the river.

Earlier this year, 3,000 people took part in the annual village run, which included different distances for different age groups.

"We were surprised to see so many people were interested in personal health and the environment," said Hassoon, who returned from nearly two decades in the United Arab Emirates three years ago.

He now has plans to organise a full-length marathon and is also looking at ways of better including women in the village's development.

"It's conservative around here... People are used to thinking women should stay at home all day. We have broken many barriers, but this one will take time," Hassoon said.

One answer is a "cultural centre" which is under construction and where women will be able to meet two days a week, attend lectures and borrow books.

"Literature, philosophy, geography, history — absolutely no religious books," he said. 

"And of course there will be Baudelaire's poetry, that's the reason I learned French when I was young."

With only about 700 inhabitants, Albu Nahadh is tiny, but its residents are convinced their experiment can be replicated.

"If you compare to other villages in the area, there are few problems here... We hope other villages will want to imitate us," said Ali.

TABGHA, Israel — An overnight arson attack damaged a revered shrine in northern Israel where Christians believe Jesus performed a miracle, and police briefly detained 16 young Jewish settlers over the incident Thursday.

The Church of the Multiplication at Tabgha, on the shores of Lake Tiberias, is where many Christians believe Jesus fed the 5,000 in the miracle of the five loaves and two fish.

Some 5,000 people visit the site each day, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "this morning's outrageous arson attack on a church is an attack on us all".

"Those responsible for this despicable crime will face the full force of the law," he said in a statement.

A church adviser blamed Jewish extremists for the incident and police later said they had detained 16 youths from settlements in the occupied West Bank for questioning.

"In an area near the church, 16 youths were detained for investigation in order to check their involvement in the incident before dawn," police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement.

She said 10 of those detained were from Yitzhar, which is known as a bastion of extremists and where some residents have been involved in previous hate crimes.

However, Samri said later that the youths had been released without charge after providing statements to the authorities.

A member of the Roman Catholic Benedictine order, which manages the site, said one of the buildings within the compound was completely destroyed in the blaze but the church itself was not damaged. 

Hebrew graffiti was found on another building within the complex, reading "Idols will be cast out" or destroyed, an AFP correspondent reported. The text is part of a common Jewish prayer.

Two people who were in the compound at the time were treated for smoke inhalation, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP. 

Father Matthias said an external atrium was "totally destroyed" in the blaze.

"The church, thank God, is in good condition," he told AFP. "We're very happy that nothing happened to the church."

Wadie Abu Nasser, an adviser to the Roman Catholic Church in the Holy Land, said the arson attack would reverberate throughout the Christian world. 

 String of attacks 

"Israel's global image will be harmed," he told Israeli public radio. 

"When you put one and one together, between the graffiti and the arson, you can reach a conclusion regarding the potential suspects."

Tabgha was subjected to a previous attack in April 2014 in which church officials said a group of religious Jewish teenagers had damaged crosses and attacked clergy.

There has been a long line of attacks on Christian and Muslim holy places in both Israel and the West Bank, in which the perpetrators are believed to have been Jewish extremists.

"I absolutely condemn such acts," deputy foreign minister Tzipi Hotovely said in a statement.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin called the head of the Benedictine order in Israel to express his concern over the incident at the site, which is expected to be closed over the next three days.

The site is owned by the German Roman Catholic Church, and Berlin's envoy to Israel Andreas Michaelis said he was "shocked" by the incident. 

"I strongly condemn this attack and every form of violence" against places of worship or people working in them, he said in a statement. 

"Religious institutions must be as well protected in Israel as they are in Germany and Europe."

Israel's Ashkenazi chief rabbi, David Lau, said such incidents "go against Jewish values and human morality".

"I call upon religious leaders to be vigilant lest extremist phenomena erode the respectful relations that exist between the faiths in Israel," he said in a statement.

"The delicate fabric of these relations must be preserved."

 In April, vandals smashed gravestones at a Maronite Christian cemetery near Israel's northern border with Lebanon.

That incident prompted Rivlin to meet church leaders and pledge a crackdown on religiously inspired hate crime. 

CAIRO — Former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi will appeal a conviction for violence, kidnapping and torture imposed by a court over the killing of protesters, his lawyers were quoted as saying by state media on Thursday.

In April, Morsi and 12 other members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including senior figures Mohamed El Beltagy and Essam El Erian, were sentenced to 20 years in prison without parole on the charges.

Two others were jailed for 10 years without parole.

Morsi, Egypt's first freely-elected president, was toppled by the army in 2013 after mass protests against his rule. Since then he has faced several legal cases.

Egypt, the most populous Arab country, has mounted a crackdown on Islamists. Hundreds have been killed and thousands arrested arrested since Morsi's fall.

Morsi's defence lawyers asked the high court, Egypt's highest civilian court, to dismiss the jail sentences and order a retrial for all the defendants before another criminal court, state news agency MENA reported.

The men were convicted on charges of violence, kidnapping and torture stemming from the killing of protesters during demonstrations in 2012.

On Tuesday, a Cairo court sentenced Morsi to death over a mass jail break during the country's 2011 uprising and passed severe sentences against the leadership of Egypt's oldest Islamic group.

The general guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, and four other Brotherhood leaders were also handed the death penalty. More than 90 others, including influential cleric Youssef Al Qaradawi, were sentenced to death in absentia.

The brotherhood has described the rulings as "null and void" and the movement called for a popular uprising on Friday.

DUBAI — Bahrain said on Thursday it had seized explosives and bomb-making materials earmarked for use in Bahrain and neighbouring Saudi Arabia in what it described as an Iranian attempt to use Bahraini borders as a base for attacking targets in the region.

Police chief Major-General Tariq Al Hasan said the methods used to assemble the explosives bore "clear similarities" to those of what he called proxy groups of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sunni Muslim-ruled Bahrain, home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, often accuses Iran, a Shiite Muslim theocracy, of seeking to subvert the Gulf Arab island monarchy.

Iran denies interfering in Bahrain, although it acknowledges it does support opposition groups seeking greater political and economic rights for Bahrain's Shiite community.

There was no immediate Iranian comment on Hasan's statement. On Tuesday, Iran's foreign ministry had called for political dialogue in Bahrain and said Manama's "security approach" would not solve the country's political tensions.

Hasan said the seized items, including powerful explosive C4, commercial detonators, advanced circuitry, chemicals and mobile phones, "represent a significant escalation in attempts to smuggle explosives material into Bahrain".

The explosives and bomb-making materials were found in a hidden area behind the wall of a warehouse in the village of Dar Kulaib near Manama, the official Bahrain News Agency said.

It said the location of the warehouse raided on June 6 was revealed by a man identified as Mohammed Jaffar Abdullah, who it said was working on behalf of a cell formed by Iran's Revolutionary Guards to carry out attacks.

Explosives seized on causeway last month — statement

Abdullah, it said, was connected to two Bahraini men detained by Saudi Arabia last month for smuggling a similar kind of explosives across the Gulf causeway from Bahrain. It did not make clear whether Abdullah was also now in custody.

The leaders of the cell, Murtadha Majeed Ramadhan Al Sindi, 32, and Qassim Abdullah Ali, 26, are fugitives in Iran wanted for previous offences, the statement said.

Bahrain has reported a growing number of attacks using home-made explosives, some of them deadly, in the past two years and has accused a banned Shiite opposition group called Saraya Al Ashtar of responsibility for some of them.

Hasan added that the materials confiscated on June 6, and in past such seizures, had been made with "professionalism", indicating international support and sponsorship.

"Of greater concern, however, is the fact that these sophisticated bomb-making materials were destined for Saudi Arabia, a sign that extremists are increasingly using Bahrain's borders as a launchpad for terrorists seeking to carry out attacks elsewhere in the region."

Two suicide bombings last month targeted Shiite mosques in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, close to the Gulf causeway linking the country to Bahrain, and were claimed by the Sunni Daesh group. The attacks sought to exploit sectarian tensions in the country.

Hasan said the explosive materials found on the two Bahraini men arrested last month matched explosives discovered on a boat travelling in December 2013 to Bahrain from Iraq, where Manama has said Bahraini anti-government activists are trained.

Bahrain was hit in 2011 by demonstrations demanding greater democracy and more rights for Shiites, many of whom say they are subject to political and economic discrimination.

Despite a heavy police crackdown on street unrest, sporadic outbreaks of protest by Shiites continued for more than two years before largely subsiding.

In 2014, Bahrain declared Saraya Al Ashtar and two other groups terrorist organisations, the day after a bomb killed two local policemen and an officer from the United Arab Emirates.

A group calling itself Saraya Al Ashtar claimed responsibility for that attack in a message on social media, although this could not be authenticated. Bahrain says the groups' two leaders live in Iran.

PARIS — A rare 3,400-year-old Egyptian burial shroud fetched 374,000 euros ($426,000) at auction in Paris Thursday, on the latest leg of a journey that has seen it passed from a billionaire banking heir to his wife and, later, his mistress.

The sale at Piasa auction house was unusual as most similar shrouds — roughly 20 are known to exist in the world — are in the collections of museums like the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

The winning bid was made by telephone and the identity of the buyer was not disclosed.

The small vividly painted square of fabric belonged to a scion of the Goldman Sachs banking dynasty and later his lover, French author and publisher Jeanne Loviton.

Organisers had said they were not sure how much the 29-by-21 centimetre shroud, which would have been placed on the deceased's sarcophagus, would fetch.

Piasa's director Henri-Pierre Teissedre stumbled across the shroud while doing an inventory of a home belonging to Loviton, who died in 1996.

The cloth is stamped with the name of a man called "Ta-nedjem", who died some 3,400 years ago.

It is made from the same type of cloth used to produce the bandages that wrap mummies and shows "Ta-nedjem" sitting on a black chair with a curved back and animal legs. 

Given the richness of his clothing, ornaments and furniture, experts believe the man — who was previously unknown to researchers — was a person of status.

Loviton herself was a woman of status in France. She was a novelist, lawyer and publisher of the work of Louis-Ferdinand Celine, best known for his novel "Journey to the End of the Night" ("Voyage Au Bout De La Nuit").

She also was the mistress of billionaire banker Arthur Sachs of the Goldman Sachs family.

He initially bought the shroud in 1927 as a gift for his wife. She kept it in their bathroom but eventually returned it to her husband, who in turn presented it to his mistress, Loviton.

Loviton kept it at her home for the rest of her days.

The chain of ownership prior to Sachs includes an antique dealer named Lucien Lepine, who bought the cloth in Egypt and later sold it to a dealer in Paris.

But how the ancient work of art came to be on the market in the first place is a mystery lost to the passage of time. 

Experts believe there is little doubt as to the shroud's authenticity.

"This would have to be the work of an extremely talented forger and great Egyptologist, who would have had to use special pigments. That seems impossible," Annie Gasse, an expert with France's National Centre for Scientific Research, said.

Gasse is working on a book about the shroud, which is considered a significant discovery because it challenges previous findings about how many of the burial cloths are thought to exist.

GENEVA — The number of people forced to flee war, violence and persecution has soared to a record 60 million, half of them children, the United Nations said Thursday, warning that the situation was raging out of control.

The huge tide of displaced people has grown by 8.3 million since 2013 — the highest-ever increase in a single year, the UN refugee agency said in a report titled "World at War".

The situation is "getting out of control simply because the world seems to be at war", UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told reporters ahead of the launch of the annual report.

"With huge shortages of funding and wide gaps in the global regime for protecting victims of war, people in need of compassion, aid and refuge are being abandoned," he warned in the report, saying the crisis needed an "unprecedented humanitarian response".

The number of displaced stood at 59.5 million worldwide at the end of 2014, "as a result of persecution, conflict, generalised violence, or human rights violations", the report said.

Last year alone, an estimated 13.9 million people were displaced — or a startling 42,500 a day. 

More than half of the world's refugees are children, up from 41 per cent in 2009, while the total number of people who fled their homes has spiked by 40 per cent in just three years.

If the world's displaced people were lumped together as a nation, it would be the 24th largest with a population similar to Italy.

Of the total, 19.5 million were refugees, 1.8 million were asylum seekers and 38.2 million had fled their homes but stayed in their country, the report said.

Can't 'pick up pieces' 

Guterres said the conflicts in Syria and Iraq alone had sent 15 million people from their homes.

But they are far from the only wars forcing people to seek safe haven. In the last five years, at least 14 conflicts have erupted or resumed worldwide — more than half of them in Africa.

"We do not have the capacity, the resources for all victims of conflicts. We are no longer able to pick up the pieces," the commissioner said.

The report said that in Europe, more than 219,000 refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean Sea during 2014. "That's almost three times the previously known high of about 70,000, which took place in 2011," it report.

Despite fears expressed in European countries and other wealthy nations over the growing refugee and migrant influx, the report showed that developing countries were hosting 86 per cent of all those who had fled war or persecution in their countries.

At the end of 2014, the world's top host for refugees was Turkey, sheltering 1.59 million people, followed by Pakistan (1.51 million) and Lebanon (1.15 million).

The number of Syrian refugees taking shelter in Turkey has further risen this year to more than 1.7 million, according to the latest UN data.

Speaking in Istanbul, Guterres urged the world, including Western states, to open up their borders and follow Turkey's "example" in hosting Syrian refugees.

He said Turkey's generosity has a special meaning in a world where "so many borders are closed or restricted and where new walls are being built or announced".

'Paradigm change' 

The report said continued turmoil in parts of North Africa following the Arab Spring uprisings that toppled several dictators saw huge numbers risking dangerous Mediterranean crossings to get to Europe.

UNHCR said it has received information of more than 3,500 women, men and children reported dead or missing in the Mediterranean Sea during 2014.

But EU leaders have so far failed to agree on how to deal with the massive influx of vulnerable people from the Middle East and Africa.

The Ukraine conflict, meanwhile, displaced over 800,000 within the country and sent well over 200,000 to Russia.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of refugees increased for the fifth consecutive year, to 3.7 million in 2014.

Guterres appealed to the world to loosen its purse strings and provide shelter to the displaced.

"We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before," he said. 

WASHINGTON — A harrowing video of doctors frantically trying to save pale, limp children after a chlorine gas attack in Syria shocked US lawmakers Wednesday, amid renewed calls for a no-fly zone to protect civilians.

"The Syrian government is using chlorine gas with impunity," the former US ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, told a House panel, warning that other nations like North Korea were watching the international response carefully.

An international consensus against using chemical weapons "forged after World War I is steadily eroding", he warned.

Assad has denied Western accusations of being behind a series of chlorine gas barrel bombings from helicopters over the northwestern province of Idlib since March with as many as 45 reported attacks in recent months.

But doctor Mohamed Tennari vividly described the night of March 16, when, after hearing helicopters over his home town of Sarmin, a wave of explosive barrel bombs were dropped filling the air with "a bleach-like odor".

"Dozens of people experienced difficulty breathing, with their eyes and throats burning, and many began secreting from the mouth," he told the House foreign affairs committee, speaking through a translator.

Among the victims were three small children, Aisha, 3, her sister Sara, 2, and brother one-year-old Mohammad. They "were a sickly pale color when they arrived, a sign of severe lack of oxygen and chemical exposure", Tennari said.

The doctors were forced to treat them on the body of their grandmother, who succumbed to the deadly poison, as they had no free beds.

"As quickly as we worked, we could not save them," he said, adding the children's mother and father also died after a chlorine-gas bomb fell down their ventilation shaft. Their basement where they had tried to shelter "became a makeshift gas chamber”.

'Obscene' suffering 

Even doctors used to dealing with death said they have been shocked by the horrific methods allegedly used by the regime in the four-year Syrian civil war aimed at ousting veteran strongman Assad.

Doctor Annie Sparrow, from the Ichan school of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, described working on the ground in Syria, her voice cracking with emotion.

"I'm a doctor and I'm very familiar with death. But I never seen a more obscene way to kill children and never watched so many suffer in such an obscene manner," she said.

"Syrian children and Syrian civilians deserve protection and the United States can provide it."

The US administration has long ruled out setting up a no-fly zone over parts of Syria, but Sparrow backed the idea, also put forward by Ford and Tennari.

"Creating a no-bomb zone would stop the most important tools that have been used to slaughter and terrorise Syrian civilians, especially the children who are the most vulnerable to these toxic gases and whose small bodies are literally ripped apart by the hideous shrapnel inside these bombs," Sparrow said.

The US "policy has to change" and implementing a no-fly zone would lead to "denying Assad ownership of the skies", agreed Representative Ed Royce, committee chairman.

"Syrians would no longer be forced to choose between staying above ground where they could be killed by the shrapnel Assad packs inside his barrel bombs or going below ground where they are more vulnerable to suffocating from chlorine gas," he said.