Syrian authorities have begun to exhume some 170 bodies found in a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus, believed to belong to victims of an ambush perpetrated by the forces of the former Bashar al-Assad regime as they fled the siege of Eastern Ghouta during the war.
The National Commission for Missing Persons began the exhumation and documentation work in the mass grave of Al Otaiba, in the presence of representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office and civil defense teams, the official Syrian news agency, SANA, reported this Friday.
In this place, the human remains of around 170 people appeared, who supposedly died from mine explosions and gunfire during an ambush while trying to escape the siege imposed in 2013 on the town of Eastern Ghouta, then in the hands of the rebels who were confronting Al-Assad.
According to previous statements by the prosecutor of Rif Damasco province, Mohammad Omar Hajjar, to SANA, the bodies were subsequently buried in a mass grave using heavy machinery to cover them with mud, so that they could not be found.
The security organs of the Al-Assad regime are accused of making tens of thousands of people disappear during the conflict that began as a result of the popular revolts against it in 2011, among other human rights violations.
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With his overthrow last December, some 30,000 missing persons were found when the old prisons run by his Government were opened, but many more remain missing and the new authorities continue to report the discovery of new mass graves.
