As urban warfare rages in Damascus and Aleppo, presumed rebel gunmen abducted 47 Iranian pilgrims just outside the capital on Aug. 4. The pilgrims were on a bus taking them from the Shi'ite shrine of Sayyida Zainab, about 10 miles south of Damascus, to the airport to return home when they were kidnapped, according to the Iranian state news agency IRNA. Dubai's Al-Arabiya television aired footage it said it had obtained from Syrian rebels of the captive Iranians, in which the captors charge that they are not actually pilgrims, but members of the Revolutionary Guard.

Amnesty International on Aug. 1 published a report holding the Syrian government responsible for human rights violations in Aleppo that AI claims amount to crimes against humanity. "All-out repression: Purging dissent in Aleppo, Syria" documents how security forces and allied militias routinely used live fire against peaceful demonstrations in and around Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria, killing and injuring protesters and bystanders. AI contends that, as the size and frequency of these anti-government protests in Aleppo increased in recent months, government forces employed "reckless and brutal use of force that inevitably led to peaceful demonstrators being killed and injured." The report "details a wide range of systematic, state-directed violations including the deliberate targeting of peaceful protesters and activists, the hunting down of injured protesters, the routine use of torture, the targeting of medics providing life-saving emergency treatment to the wounded, arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances." AI further claims that arrested individuals were routinely tortured, threatened and intimidated while in detention, and reiterates its long-standing calls for the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court.

Large protests began two weeks ago in Syria's largest Palestinian refugee camp, Yarmouk, an enclave of nearly 150,000 within Damascus. Security forces fired on protesters, killing at least five and setting off a cycle of funerals, demonstrations and further crackdowns—which in recent days has escalated to shelling of the camp. Similar violence has hit other Palestinian camps in Syria. More than two-thirds of the 17,500 refugees in the southern city of Daraa fled an attack last month, the UN reported. While many have returned, the camp is under siege, with food and medicine in short supply. Palestinian activists provided AP with the names of 198 refugees killed since the Syrian uprising began in March 2011—67 in July alone. The Palestinian Authority places the number of Palestinians killed in Syria since the start of the uprising as high as 300.