Teams investigate mass graves in Syria

DAMASCUS

Members of the Syrian Civil Defense group, the White Helmets, carry a body bag after several bodies and human remains were discovered along a road leading to the airport in Damascus, Syria, 16 Dec. 2024.

The Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, has begun investigating some of mass graves discovered in Damascus.

One of them contains trenches filled with human remains and sacks marked with prison codes, indicating that the victims likely died due to torture or in notorious prisons.

The White Helmets have received reports of at least 13 mass grave sites around the country, eight of them near Damascus. The remains of over 30 bodies were uncovered in southern Syria this week.

Forensic teams worked alongside rebel fighters who now control the country, carefully handling bags of human remains as an excavator rumbled in the background, while relatives stood by.

The new authorities in Damascus have set up a hotline for reporting missing persons and secret detention sites.

An international war crimes prosecutor said that evidence emerging from mass grave sites in Syria has exposed a state-run "machinery of death" under toppled leader Bashar al-Assad.

The International Commission on Missing Persons in The Hague separately said it had received data indicating there may be as many as 66, as yet unverified, mass grave sites in Syria. More than 157,000 people have been reported missing to the commission.

Commission head Kathryne Bomberger said that its portal for reporting the missing was now "exploding" with new contacts from families.

Meanwhile, Turkish rescue workers have ended their search for survivors inside Syria's notorious Saydnaya prison after finding no detainees languishing in any hidden cells.

The search by a 120-member team was conducted at the request of Syria's new authorities, according to Okay Memiş, the director of Türkiye’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD).

"The entire building was searched and analyzed with a scanner, and no living person was found," Memiş told journalists at the site.