The human rights group Amnesty International has expressed concern about the rising number of arrests in Syria of those opposed to the government.

It said the authorities had arrested hundreds of people since December the twelfth, and that many had been tortured.

Amnesty suggested that many were arrested for their opposition towards Syria's renewed peace moves towards Israel.

Detainees are said to come from fundamentalist groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hizb ut-Tahrir puts the number of arrests at more than five-hundred, and says they are still continuing. Up to twenty-five thousand people are believed to have died in l982, when the government put down an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood in the town of Hama.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service