A/HRC/24/46 committing the war crime of attacking protected objects. Such attacks spread terror among the civilian population. 3. Anti-government armed groups 149. On 28 May, Liwa Shuhada Al-Huran attacked the national hospital in Dara’a. No warning was given prior to the attack. The attack violated international humanitarian law and amounts to the war crime of attacking protected objects. 4. (a) Cultural property Government and pro-government forces 150. Government forces attacked cultural property as military targets. On 13 July, government forces aerially bombarded Krak des Chevaliers, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Homs, causing severe damage to a fortress tower. The commission was unable to confirm allegations that anti-government groups were stationed there at the time. (b) Anti-government armed groups 151. In the two days following the attack on Hatla (Dayr az Zawr) on 11 June, Jabhat AlNusra fighters looted and detonated explosives placed within the Shia hussainiat of Imam Al-Hussein and Imam Murtada and the Shia Al-Rasoul Al-Muaddam mosque. These places of worship were targeted deliberately as part of an attack on a Shia locality. 152. Prior to April, a church in Ghassaniya (Idlib) was vandalized, its statues dismembered and icons painted over. According to the remaining priest, extremist antigovernment fighters carried out the attack. 5. Journalists 153. The Syrian Arab Republic has become the world’s most dangerous (and, in 2012, the deadliest) country for media workers. Syrian and international journalists have been killed, arbitrarily arrested, detained, tortured and disappeared in the line of duty. Several Syrian journalists have gone into voluntary exile. 154. As many as 84 journalists have been killed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011. The figure comprises citizen journalists and netizens (people who reported on the ongoing violence through social media). 155. To date, more than a dozen local and international journalists on assignment in the Syrian Arab Republic remain mis sing. 6. Government and pro-government forces 156. On 5 July, Fida Al-Baali, also known as Mohammed Moaz, a reporter with Orient News and a citizen journalist, died of injuries sustained the month before while covering government shelling of Qabun, north of Damascus. 157. The Government arbitrarily arrested, detained and tortured journalists. On 16 February 2012, 13 journalists from the Damascus -based Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression were arrested by Air Force Intelligence and detained at Al-Mezzeh. Some of the men were severely tortured. To date, three of them – Mazen Darwish, the Centre Director, Hussein Ghrer and Hani Al-Zeitani – remain in detention at Damascus Central Prison and face charges of “promoting terrorist acts”. Their next hearing at the terrorism court in Damascus was set for 21 August. 19