MASS GRAVE FOUND IN SYRIA’S ALEPPO

Twelve mass graves have been discovered in southern Syria [Sam Hariri/AFP]

Mon 06 January 2025:

A mass grave containing remains believed to be those of civilians killed by the regime of ousted President Bashar Al-Assad was found in the village of Naqqarin in the Syrian province of Aleppo on Sunday, Anadolu has reported. A number of mass graves have been found in Syria since the overthrow of the Baathist regime on 8 December.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), for example, announced the discovery of a mass grave on 29 December in the vicinity of the Houla region in Homs. It is also believed to contain the remains of Assad’s victims.

It is understood that there are many mass graves in Syria that have not yet been discovered. The aim of exhuming the bodies in the graves is to reveal the fate of missing individuals.

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A mass grave discovered near Damascus

A mass grave near Damascus discovered in early December contained the remains of at least 100,000 individuals, reportedly victims of atrocities committed by the former Syrian regime, according to Mouaz Moustafa, head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, who revealed that the site located in al-Qutayfah, roughly 25 miles north of the capital, is one of five mass graves he has documented over the years.

On Monday, a new mass grave containing hundreds of bodies was found in Aleppo, the Ministry of Interior said. The site was found when a local resident alerted authorities to the grave.

Brigadier General Ahmed Latouf, Aleppo’s provincial police commander, led an investigation at the site. Efforts to identify the remains are underway, with DNA testing set to confirm the identities of the deceased, the ministry added.

Families who have long awaited news of missing loved ones are especially devastated by the possibility that their relatives might lie among the unidentified remains.

“This is a profoundly sensitive matter for us,” Yasmen Almashan, head of the Caesar Families Association, told The New Arab. “It suggests that those we’ve been waiting for all these years might be among the dead in these graves.”

She also emphasised the importance of resolving the fate of the missing, stating that if they are deceased, their remains should be returned to their families for proper burial to honour the sacrifices they made.

Regime opponents argue that these mass graves are the grim outcome of the Assad family’s systematic machinery of repression, honed over decades to silence dissent.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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