The head of a U.S.-based Syrian advocacy organization on Monday said that a mass grave beyond Damascus contained the bodies of a minimum of 100,000 people killed by the former federal government of ousted President Bashar al-Assad.
Mouaz Moustafa, speaking to Reuters in a telephone interview from Damascus, said the site at al Qutayfah, 25 miles (40 km) north of the Syrian capital, was among five mass graves that he had actually recognized throughout the years.&& One hundred thousand is the most conservative estimate& & of the variety of bodies buried at the website, said Moustafa, head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force.
&& It & s a very, very extremely almost unfairly conservative quote.&& Moustafa stated that he makes sure there are more mass tombs than the 5 websites, which in addition to Syrians victims consisted of U.S.
and British citizens and other foreigners.Reuters was not able to confirm Moustafa&& s allegations.Hundreds of countless Syrians are approximated to have actually been eliminated considering that 2011, when Assad&& s crackdown on protests against his rule grew into a full-scale civil war.Assad and his dad Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, are accused by Syrians, rights groups and other governments of extensive extrajudicial killings, consisting of mass executions within the country&& s infamous prison system.Assad repeatedly rejected that his government committed human rights offenses and painted his detractors as extremists.Syria&& s U.N.
Ambassador Koussay Aldahhak did not instantly respond to a request for remark.
He presumed the role in January &-- while Assad was still in power &-- however informed reporters last week that he was awaiting guidelines from the brand-new authorities and would && keep defending and working for the Syrian individuals.&& Moustafa got here in Syria after Assad flew to Russia and his government collapsed in the face of a lightning offensive by rebels that ended his household&& s more than 50 years of iron-fisted rule.He spoke with Reuters after he was talked to at the site in al Qutayfah by Britain&& s Channel 4 News for a report on the alleged mass tomb there.He stated the intelligence branch of the Syrian air force was && in charge of bodies going from military medical facilities, where bodies were collected after they&& d been tortured to death, to different intelligence branches, and then they would be sent to a mass grave location.&& Corpses also were carried to sites by the Damascus local funeral office whose workers helped dump them from refrigerated tractor-trailers, he said.&& We had the ability to talk to the people who dealt with these mass graves that had on their own left Syria or that we helped to escape,& & said Moustafa.His group has spoken to bulldozer motorists obliged to dig graves and && often times on orders, squished the bodies to fit them in and after that cover them with dirt,& & he said.Moustafa revealed concern that graves sites were unsecured and stated they needed to be protected to secure evidence for investigations.The post At least 100,000 bodies in Syrian mass grave, US advocacy group head states initially appeared on Ariana News.