New UN report describes horrific and systematic torture of Syrian victims

The United Nations commissioner for Human Rights on Monday condemned the "routine" use of torture in Syrian detention facilities, as a new report describes how victims were raped, beaten and had their teeth and toenails pulled out.

Navi Pillay said torture was routinely used in government detention facilities as well as by some armed groups in the Middle Eastern nation, where more than 150,000 people have so far been killed in a bloody civil war lasting three years.

"When torture is used in armed conflict, in a systematic or widespread manner, which is almost certainly the case in Syria, it also amounts to a crime against humanity," said Ms Pillay.

The UN report, based on accounts by 38 survivors, detailed the systematic persecution of men, women and children in the war-torn country.

When detainees arrived at state detention facilities, they were "routinely beaten and humiliated for several hours by guards in what has come to be known as the 'reception party'," it said.

A 30-year-old university student described how he was beaten, had his beard pulled out and his feet burned at an Air Force Intelligence facility where he was interrogated in 2012.

In another session, "they pulled out two of my toenails with pliers," he said.

And a 26-year-old woman gave an account of being beaten, raped and having her teeth pulled out.

"They called us prostitutes and spat in our faces," said the woman, whose family rejected her after learning she had been raped.

Nearly half of Syria's population have been forced to flee their homes since peaceful anti-government protests that began in 2011 spiralled into a violent conflict.

Investigators also found that several armed groups, including the al-Nusra Front, had used torture against men, women and children.

Human rights activists and medical workers seen to be affiliated with other armed groups were particularly vulnerable.

Ms Pillay said torturers must be brought to justice and victims given treatment and fair compensation.

She also reiterated her call for Damascus to allow the UN and other international bodies to monitor conditions in detention centres.

Meanwhile, rebels and the government are blaming each other for two alleged chemical attacks last week.

Syrian opposition activists have posted photographs and video that they say shows an improvised chlorine bomb used by President Bashar al-Assad's forces on a rebel-held village in the central province of Hama, 125 miles north of capital Damascus.

However, state television on Saturday accused the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front of carrying out the attacks, which it said wounded dozens.

Both sides claim chlorine gas - a deadly agent widely used in World War I - had been used. The gas, which has industrial uses, is not on a list of weapons that Assad declared to the global chemical weapons watchdog last year for destruction.

Eliot Higgins, a UK-based researcher who identifies weapon usage in online videos of Syria's civil, said that while videos did appear to show an industrial chlorine cylinder, he could not unequivocally verify the opposition's claims.

"It looks like they (the government) have taken an industrial chlorine cylinder, put it in a improvised barrel bomb and dropped it out of a helicopter," he told Reuters.

The yellow paint on the cylinder complies with international standards on industrial gas colour codes indicating it contains chlorine, he added.

A UN inquiry found last December that sarin gas had likely been used in the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Ghouta, where hundreds of people were killed.

The Syrian government and the opposition have each accused the other of using chemical weapons on several occasions, and both have denied it.

The Ghouta attack sparked global outrage and a U.S. threat of military strikes, which was dropped after President Assad pledged to destroy his chemical weapons.

Syria has so far destroyed or surrendered 65.1 per cent of the 1,300 metric tonnes of weapons it reported to possess, but is running several weeks behind schedule with the deadline of June 30 to completely abandon its chemical programme.