Mass graves reveal the scope of atrocities after Assad's fall
After the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, many mass graves have been uncovered. Experts suggest that there could be at least 100,000 bodies in these graves. "We really haven't seen anything quite like this since the Nazis," says former U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes, Stephen Rapp.
The head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, Mouaz Moustafa, reported that in a mass grave in Al Qutayfah (about 40 kilometres from Damascus), there are bodies of at least 100,000 victims killed by the former regime of ousted President Bashar al-Assad. In a discussion with the Reuters agency, he noted that this is one of five mass graves he has identified over the years.
However, he emphasized that the number of people buried there "a very, very extremely almost unfairly conservative estimate." He also mentioned that there are more such sites and that victims included not only Syrians but also U.S. and U.K. citizens, as well as other foreigners.
Former U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes, Stephen Rapp, after visiting two mass graves in the towns of Qutayfah and Najha near Damascus, also holds no illusions about the number of buried individuals. - We certainly have more than 100,000 people that were disappeared into and tortured to death in this machine. I don't have much doubt about those kinds of numbers given what we've seen in these mass graves - he said in a conversation with the agency.
- We really haven't seen anything quite like this since the Nazis. We are talking about a system of state terror, which became a machinery of death - he added.
The fall of Assad's regime
As a result of a rapid offensive lasting only 11 days, a coalition of rebels led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) overthrew Assad on December 8, who fled with his family to Russia. Mohamed al-Bashir became the prime minister of the transitional government.
Fourteen years of war have led to mass population displacement in Syria, food shortages, infrastructure collapse, economic decline, and outbreaks of diseases. About 16.7 million people urgently need assistance. The escalation of hostilities in Lebanon has also worsened the situation, forcing over 560,000 people to flee the conflict to Syria.
Source: Reuters, PAP
