At least 100,000 bodies in Syrian mass grave, US advocacy group head says

The head of a U.S.-based Syrian advocacy organization on Monday said that a mass grave outside of Damascus contained the bodies of at least 100,000 people killed by the former government of President Bashar al-Assad.

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

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

“It’s a very, very extremely almost unfairly conservative estimate.” He emphasized.
Moustafa alleged that there are more mass graves than the five sites, and that along with Syrians victims included U.S. and British citizens and other foreigners.

He also stated that his group spoke to bulldozer drivers compelled to dig graves and “many times on orders, squished the bodies down to fit them in and then cover them with dirt.”

Moustafa expressed concern that graves sites were unsecured and said they needed to be preserved to safeguard evidence for investigations.

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

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.

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

Source: Reuters