DHAKA: Women in Syria are increasingly the targets of violent abuse and torture by government forces and armed groups.

Some 6,000 women have been raped since the start of the conflict in March 2011, the Euro Mediterranean Human Rights Network says.

A spokeswoman for the group said these women were then socially stigmatised, and often forced to flee their homes.

Women are being targeted by snipers and used as human shields, often with their children, the report also says.

Violence against Women, a Bleeding Wound in the Syrian Conflict is based on interviews with victims and medical staff in the first half of 2013.

The report describes how hundreds of Syrian women have been subjected to arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances and have undergone various forms of torture, in state detention facilities.

‘They are being used as privilege, not in the sense that they are favoured, but because sometimes of their relationship to opposition members or government-related members,’ EMHRN spokeswoman Hayet Zeghiche told the BBC.

‘They are deliberately targeted because of political issues and also because they are vulnerable victims.’

BDST: 1913 HRS, NOV 26, 2013