A new U.N. report meanwhile says that Syrian children are being subjected to torture, sexual violence, and being used as human shields in the fighting. U.N. Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy unveiled the report’s findings.

Radhika Coomaraswamy: “We have seen children. They’ve described to my technical team of being beaten, of being scarred by cigarette burns and whipped with electrical cables. Cases of sexual torture were also recorded against these children. So the torture of children in detention is something quite horrific. In addition, we have evidence of children being used as human shields. In the Ayn l’Arouz village, for example, children from that village described how in a bus that was carrying military personnel, the children were put up against the window so as to protect the bus from being attacked.”