Mon 10 February 2020:
A video showing a group of men destroying a tomb in a cemetery in Idlib, Syria, has sent shock waves around the world. According to news sources, the men featured in the video are members of the Syrian Army aka Bashar Assad’s forces and were targeting graves of militants who fought against government forces during the Syrian Civil War.
#سوريا.. فيديو متداول لعناصر من قوات #النظام_السوري ينبشون قبور مقاتلين معارضين pic.twitter.com/wQTqOPiR7m
— العربية سوريا (@AlArabiya_SY) February 8, 2020
Translation: “Viral video shows members of the Syrian regime’s forces destroying graves of counter militants.”
The video shows men in military uniform and others dressed in civilian outfits destroying the grave of Muhanna Ammar Eddine, a brigade commander in the Free Syrian Army killed in June 2014.
In the video, the men can be seen using rocks trying to destroy the headstone before they kicked it with their feet. Another man was seen digging the grave using a shovel while his comrades expressed their joy at what they considered “revenge against Ammar Eddine”.
Another video showed the entire graveyard and its contents destroyed, with the graves completely dug up and the bodies exhumed. The graveyard is located in the town of Khan Al-Sabil in southern Idlib, by the strategic M5 highway which the regime and its militias recently captured. Another video shows the regime fighters going even further by holding skulls of opposition fighters and civilians and mocking them.
شبيحة الأسد بعد ان نبشوا مقابر المسليمن في سوريا استخرجوا جمجمة احد الموتى ليسخروا منها. #ادلب #حلب pic.twitter.com/KhCrn5lUJo
— عمر مدنيه (@Omar_Madaniah) February 9, 2020
One of the main regime militants who appeared in the graveyard video can also be seen in other videos three days earlier where he was being driven past the graveyard while calling the inhabitants “impure” and promising to return to settle his account “with the dead before the living.” He was then seen a day before the destruction in a video filmed inside a ruined and abandoned mosque in Idlib, in which he shouted slogans in support of Assad from the mosque’s pulpit, accompanied by other regime fighters.
In response to the videos and the Assad regime militants’ destruction of the graveyards – which were nominally Sunni Muslim graves – opposition forces released a video showing a Sunni evolutionary fighter at a Shia graveyard in the town of Al-Foua and Kafriya saying: “We can destroy your graves and dig them up, but this is not from our morals, nor from our customs and from our religion.”
بعد نبش قبور المسلمين في سوريا من قبل شبيحة الاسد.
رسالة من أحد الثوار من مقبرة قرية الفوعة وكفريا (الشيعية): ” نستطيع ان نهدم قبوركم وننبشها،و لكن هذا ليس من اخلاقنا ولا من عاداتنا ومن ديننا ” pic.twitter.com/fQL9XrlkMw— عمر مدنيه (@Omar_Madaniah) February 9, 2020
The regime’s destruction of the graves, seen as an act that does not release even the dead from the Syrian civil war, comes amid the ongoing bombardment of the country’s north-western Idlib province which is the last major opposition stronghold.
He province was declared a de-escalation and safe zone after an agreement was struck between Turkey and Russia in September 2018, however that was violated by both the Syrian regime and its ally, Russia, when they launched the campaign to recapture the area in April last year.
With much of the country having been returned to regime hands, and consequently many of the citizens again being subject to its suppression and torture, Idlib has long been in Al-Assad’s sight. Throughout much of last year, however, the regime made little progress in retaking it from the opposition until Russian ground troops and Iranian forces became involved, helping Al-Assad advance into much of the province and capture many cities and areas. Since the beginning of Al-Assad’s campaign, there have been numerous ceasefires set up which were all broken primarily by the Syrian regime and Russia.
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