At least 100,000 bodies in Syria mass grave, US advocacy group says
Victims were people tortured and killed by the now-overthrown Assad government
The head of a US-based Syrian advocacy organisation on Monday said that a mass grave outside Damascus contained the bodies of at least 100,000 people killed by the former government of ousted President Bashar al-Assad.
Mouaz Moustafa, speaking to Reuters in a telephone interview from Damascus, said the site at al-Qutayfah, 40km (25 miles) 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.”
Moustafa said that he is sure there are more mass graves than the five sites, and that along with Syrians victims included US and British citizens and other foreigners.
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Reuters was unable to confirm Moustafa’s allegations.
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.
