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Five-year-old girl in Syria murdered by family in alleged 'honour killing'
The body of an infant girl was found dumped in a garbage container in the north Syrian town of Manbij after allegedly being murdered by her own parents in an apparent honour killing, according to local media reports earlier this week.
The five-year-old's family killed her "in cold blood" after she was raped by an unidentified attacker, "in a crime that has nothing to do with honour", said the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
An unidentified man reportedly kidnapped the girl on 18 November and raped her in a field in an area called Al-Shahba, currently under the control of Kurdish forces in the northern countryside of the Aleppo governorate.
According to SOHR, the girl left her house to meet her father who works on the farmlands before being snatched by a stranger who was riding a motorcycle.
It was not clear when the girl was murdered and how long she had been left in the garbage container.
SOHR called on those behind the crime and all honour killings to stand trial.
Many such crimes have gone unpunished in Syria, especially after the country was plunged into chaos by 10 years of civil war.
In July last year, protesters in Hasakeh in northeast Syria took to the streets in anger after two girls were killed by their relatives in so-called "honour killings".
One of the victims had been chained up for over a year after her cousin raped her. Her father reportedly strangled her to death.
A report by the legal monitor Syrians for Truth and Justice says honour killings and femicides "remain rife" in Syria.