Mass Graves With Thousands Of People Killed By Al-Assad’s Regime Are Being Discovered Across Syria

Mass graves are being discovered in Syria, revealing the extent of atrocities committed during the regime of former President Bashar al-Assad.

After peaceful pro-democracy protests against Assad in 2011 turned into a full-scale civil war, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed, tortured or forcibly disappeared by his regime. 

A mass grave was uncovered on Tuesday, Dec. 17, near al-Qutayfah, approximately 40 kilometers north of Damascus, which could contain an estimated at least 100,000 bodies of people, according to Mouaz Moustafa, head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force.

Moustafa said that 100,000 is the “most conservative estimate” of the number of bodies buried at the site.

Since Assad was toppled on Dec. 8, at least 12 mass grave locations have been identified across Syria, according to Al Jazeera.

Some of the bodies found in the mass graves showed signs of execution and torture.

Reports indicate that bodies, which included those of women and children, were often transported in refrigerated trucks from detention facilities to the burial sites, where they were buried in trenches.

The International Commission on Missing Persons in The Hague separately said it had received data indicating there may be as many as 66, as yet unverified, mass grave sites in Syria.

A former US war crimes ambassador, Stephen Rapp, said that the evidence from the graves suggests a systematic “machinery of deaths” operated by the al-Assad regime.

“We really haven't seen anything quite like this since the Nazis,” said Rapp.

Between 2011 and 2015, estimates suggest that between 5,000 and 13,000 individuals were executed in Assad’s detention centers, with overall deaths in the prison exceeding 30,000 due to torture and ill-treatment, according to an Amnesty International report.

More than 150,000 people are still considered missing, according to the United Nations and the Syrian Network for Human Rights.

The process of exhuming bodies and identifying victims is expected to be lengthy and complex. Forensic teams are now working to recover remains and collect DNA samples to help provide closure for families still searching for their missing loved ones.

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