Reuters disclosed a significant clandestine undertaking by the Assad administration in Syria, involving the relocation of thousands of corpses from a communal burial ground in Qutayf to a concealed area in the desert close to Dumayr.
Mass graves in Syria / © reuters.com
The administration of Bashar al-Assad has been carrying out a secretive project for a couple of years, aimed at transferring numerous cadavers from a notably extensive mass burial site in Syria — situated near Qutayfa — to a freshly established, carefully camouflaged spot in the arid region beyond the city of Dumayr, located more than an hour’s journey from the capital.
This information was provided by Reuters.
The scheme orchestrated by Assad’s forces to exhume a collective burial site in Qutayf and establish a novel one — in a far-off desert zone — had not been previously documented.
To ascertain the precise position of the interment and the scope of the endeavor, Reuters journalists conducted interviews with 13 individuals who participated directly in the conveyance of the remains, scrutinized records procured from the implicated authorities, and examined hundreds of satellite images.
Burial in Syria / © Reuters
The operation was designated “Earth Shift” and spanned from 2019 to 2021. Its objective, according to firsthand accounts, was to conceal the misdeeds of the Syrian government and project an image of “return to normalcy” ahead of initiatives to revive Assad’s global standing.
Reuters has yet to secure a reply from President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s administration for feedback on the findings of the inquiry. The media outlet is withholding the specific coordinates of the fresh gravesite to avert potential harm.
The recent burial location in the Dumayr desert, thought to comprise no less than 34 trenches and a total expanse of approximately two kilometers, constitutes one of the largest identified mass graveyards stemming from the Syrian internal conflict, as per investigators. Witness narratives imply that tens of thousands of individuals are entombed there.
The government commenced utilization of the Kuteif cemetery around 2012, at the outset of the conflict. Based on accounts, it served as the final resting place for soldiers, detainees, and sufferers of torture who perished in penal facilities and military hospitals.
In 2014, a Syrian advocate for human rights disseminated photographs of the gravesite that initially signaled its presence. The definitive geographical data only surfaced several years subsequently, courtesy of legal documents and fresh journalistic explorations.
Witnesses stated that six to eight vehicles were conveying soil and human vestiges from Qutayfa to the Dumayr desert nearly every week between February 2019 and April 2021. Reuters could not validate whether remains were also being transported from alternate sites, and was unable to locate any official records referencing the operation.
Participants in the undertaking — encompassing drivers, repairmen, earthmover operators, and Republican Guard personnel — recollect the appalling malodor that accompanied each transit.
Former leader Bashar al-Assad, who escaped to Russia after the dissolution of his government late the previous year, along with several ranking officials named as principal actors in the operation, are presently inaccessible for commentary.
According to a former Guard official, the concept of “relocating remains” arose in late 2018, as Assad was nearing triumph in the conflict. The intention was to obscure proof of transgressions and prepare the ground for Syria’s eventual reinstatement to international acknowledgment.
During that period, global organizations and human rights watchdogs lacked entry to any of the detention centers or mass burial grounds within Syria.
Two truck operators and an ex-officer questioned by Reuters conveyed that military superiors mandated the evacuation of human residues from a mass burial site in Kuteif “to sanitize” and conceal substantiation of the wholesale slayings. By the time the regime collapsed, all 16 trenches in Kuteif that journalists had cataloged had been emptied.
Syrian human rights collectives gauge the aggregate loss of life in the regime’s security divisions at surpassing 160,000; a multitude of them, they assert, are interred in scores of communal burial locations established throughout Assad’s tenure. Methodical exhumations and DNA analyses could aid in ascertaining the destinies of these individuals and partially ameliorate one of the most profound injuries in the nation’s contemporary chronology. Nevertheless, owing to a paucity of resources and proficiency, the majority of recognized gravesites in Syria have yet to undergo excavation or recording.
As a reminder, Hamas combatants publicly executed eight men in Gaza.
Source: tsn.ua