Assad, who fled to Moscow, had repeatedly denied that his government committed human rights violations and painted his detractors as extremists.

At least 100,000 bodies were buried at Qutayfah alone, the head of US-based advocacy organisation the Syrian Emergency Task Force, Mouaz Moustafa, estimates.

‘Place of horrors’

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 150,000 people are considered missing, according to international and Syrian organisations, including the United Nations and the Syrian Network for Human Rights, it said.

Commission head Kathryne Bomberger told Reuters its portal for reporting the missing was now “exploding” with new contacts from families.

By comparison, roughly 40,000 people went missing during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

For the families, the search for the truth in Syria could be long and difficult. A DNA match will require at least three relatives providing DNA reference samples and taking a DNA sample from each one of these skeletal remains found in the graves, Bomberger said.

The commission called for sites to be protected so that evidence was preserved for potential trials, but the mass grave sites were easily accessible on Tuesday.

The United States is engaged with a number of UN bodies to ensure the Syrian people get answers and accountability, the State Department said.

Syrian residents living near Qutayfah, a former military base 40 kilometres north of the capital, and a cemetery in Najha used to hide bodies from detention sites described seeing a steady stream of refrigerated trucks delivering bodies which were dumped into long trenches dug with bulldozers.

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“The graves were prepared in an organised manner – the truck would come, unload the cargo it had, and leave. There were security vehicles with them, and no one was allowed to approach; anyone who got close used to go down with them,” Abb Khalid, who works as a farmer next to Najha cemetery, said.

In Qutayfah, residents declined to speak on camera or use their names for fear of retribution, saying they were not yet sure the area was safe after Assad’s fall.

“This is the place of horrors,” one said.

Inside a site enclosed with cement walls, three children played near a Russian-made military satellite vehicle. The soil was flat and levelled, with straight, long marks where the bodies were believed buried.

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Satellite imagery

Satellite imagery analysed by Reuters showed large-scale digging began at the location between 2012 and 2014 and continued up until 2022. Multiple satellite images taken by Maxar during that time showed a digger and large trenches visible at the site, along with three or four large trucks.

Omar Hujeirati, a former anti-Assad protest leader who lives near the Najha cemetery, which was used until the larger Qutayfah site was created because it was full, said he suspected several of his missing family members might be in the grave.

He believes at least some of those taken, including two sons and four brothers, were detained for protesting against Assad’s government.

“That was my sin, what made them take my family,” he said, a long, exposed trench behind him where the bodies were apparently buried.

Details of Syria’s mass graves first emerged during German court hearings and US congressional testimony in 2021 and 2023. A man identified only as “the gravedigger” repeatedly testified as a witness about his work at Najha and Qutayfah during the German trial of Syrian government officials.

While working in cemeteries around Damascus at the end of 2011, two intelligence officers showed up at his office and ordered him and his colleagues to transport and bury corpses. He testified that he rode in a van adorned with pictures of Assad and drove to the sites several times a week between 2011 and 2018, followed by large refrigeration trucks filled with bodies.

The trucks carried several hundred corpses from Tishreen, Mezzeh and Harasta military hospitals to Najha and Qutayfah, he said in the trial. At the sites, deep trenches were already dug, and the gravedigger and his colleagues would unload the corpses into the trenches, which would be covered with dirt by excavators as soon as a section of the trench was full, he said.

“Every week, twice a week, three trailer trucks arrived, packed with 300 to 600 bodies of victims of torture, starvation, and execution from military hospitals and intelligence branches around Damascus,” he told Congress in a written statement.

The gravedigger escaped from Syria to Europe in 2018 and has repeatedly testified about the mass graves, but always with his identity shielded from the public and the media.

Reuters