"What we're assessing is that if you have that level of production of mass murder, then using the crematorium would help - would allow the regime to manage that number of corpses coming out of the prison complex", he said.
The US said Monday it believes the Syrian government has built a large crematorium near the notorious Saydnaya Military Prison in an effort to hide mass atrocities carried out there, and placed the onus on Russian Federation to rein in the regime. Further, the U.S. State Department said the prison was modified to create a space to cremate the bodies.
A foreign ministry statement published by state news agency SANA said the US administration had come out with "a new Hollywood story detached from reality" by alleging the crematorium had been built at Sednaya military prison near Damascus.
The State Department believes the building is a crematorium because of the presence of a "discharge stack, the probable firewall, and probable air intake - this is in the construction phase - this would be consistent if they were building a crematorium".
Al-Jazeera reports the photos show snow melting on the roof of one building and not others, indicating a significant heat source.
The Trump administration has accused the Syrian government of carrying out mass killings of thousands of prisoners and burning the bodies in a large crematorium outside the capital Damascus.
Former prisoners have described mass hangings.
All are governments that have pressed the United States over six years of civil war in Syria to intervene more forcefully.
Trump defends sharing information with Russians
The report claims that Trump relayed sensitive details gathered through an intelligence-sharing arrangement with an allied nation. And when they say its classified, if it was public knowledge, then it could hurt the national security of the United States.
But Tillerson, he said, "was firm and clear with Minister Lavrov".
Most political prisoners said they had been held in the Red Building, a facility the regime largely emptied of mostly Islamist and jihadist prisoners in the early months of the anti-Assad uprising that began in early 2011.
"We are appalled by the atrocities that have been carried out by the Syrian regime and these atrocities have been carried out seemingly with the unconditional support from Russian Federation and Iran", Mr Jones said.
In addition to airstrikes that often involve barrel bombs and targeting hospitals strikes, the regime is conducting chemical weapons attacks, arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings, starvation, sexual violence, and withholding food, water, and medical care to civilians, Jones said, as the regime "continues to systematically abduct and torture civilian detainees, often beating, electrocuting, and raping these victims".
"Russia has either aided in or passively looked away as the regime has conducted an airstrike against a United Nations convoy, destroyed east Aleppo and used chemical weapons, including sarin, against civilians in Idlib province on April 4", Jones elaborated Monday.
The allegation came as President Donald Trump weighs options in Syria, where the USA attacked a government air base last month in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack on civilians.
He said at the time that he hoped to work with Putin, whose forces are in Syria to protect Assad's regime, to achieve that goal.
But relations with Moscow, already dire under Barack Obama, have not improved and Assad has continued to bombard civilian areas in his battle with opposition rebels.
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