Thousands of bodies found in Syria’s mass graves

Al-Assad and his father Hafez have been accused of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions.

Mass grave found in Damascus — Sanitary workers check human remains found in a newly uncovered mass grave in a field in Izra, in Syria’s southern Deraa province. [Sam Harira/AFP]

A mass grave outside Damascus contained the bodies of at least 100,000 people killed by the regime of ousted President Bashar al-Assad, according to the head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force.

Mouaz Moustafa said the site at al-Qutayfah 40km (25 miles) north of the Syrian capital, was one of five mass graves that he had identified over the years, according to Reuters.

“One hundred thousand is the most conservative estimate” of the number of bodies buried at the site, said Moustafa.

“It’s a very, very extremely, almost unfairly, conservative estimate.”

Moustafa said there are more mass graves that, along with Syrian victims, include foreigners.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011 when al-Assad’s crackdown on protests against his rule grew into a full-scale civil war.

Al-Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, are accused by Syrians, rights groups and other governments of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country’s notorious prison system.

Al-Assad repeatedly denied that his government committed human rights violations and painted his detractors as “extremists”.