US accuses Assad of installing crematorium to hide mass murder

Stuart Jones, the acting assistant US secretary of near eastern affairs, told reporters Monday, "We now believe that the Syrian regime has installed a crematorium in the Saydnaya Prison Complex which could dispose of detainees remains with little evidence.” He is executing as many as 50 people a day, according to newly declassified US intelligence. Jones added that the regime will put up to 70 prisoners in a cell designed to hold five people before they are killed.

Saydnaya Prison was branded a "human slaughterhouse" by Amnesty International, which estimates that as many as 13,000 people "were extra-judicially executed" between 2011 and 2015.

Jones detailed the information about Assad's crematorium as part of a condemnation of Russia's "apparent tolerance of Syrian atrocities" as they support Assad. "We hope that we will now be able to work with the Russians in a constructive way to put pressure on the regime to end these atrocities," he said. "Russia holds tremendous influence over Bashar al-Assad," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Monday.