“Reuters: Human rights activist says at least 100,000 bodies in mass grave in Syria A mass grave containing the bodies of at least 100,000 people killed during Bashar al-Assad’s rule has been found in Syria. According to human rights defender Muaz Mustafa, this is one of the five mass graves discovered near Damascus.”, — write on: unn.ua
Details
Muaz Mustafa, speaking to Reuters in a telephone interview from Damascus, said the site in al-Qutaif, 40 km north of the Syrian capital, was one of five mass graves he had discovered over the years.
“One hundred thousand is the most conservative estimate” of the number of bodies buried at the site, said Mustafa, head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force: “It’s a very, very extremely almost unfairly conservative estimate.”
Mustafa said he was sure there were more than five mass graves, and that the victims included US and British citizens, as well as other foreigners, in addition to Syrians.
Reuters could not confirm Mustafa’s claim.
Mustafa expressed concern that the burial sites were not guarded and said they needed to be preserved to preserve evidence for investigations.
Addition
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when Assad’s crackdown on protests against his rule escalated into full-scale civil war.
Assad and his father, Hafez, who was president before him and died in 2000, are accused by Syrians, human rights groups and other governments of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions in the country’s notorious prison system.
Assad has repeatedly denied that his government violated human rights and called his detractors extremists.