Assad’s killing fields: Mass graves containing ‘sacks stuffed with human bones’ are found close to Damascus as Syrians dig up horrors of dictator’s regime

Mass graves containing sacks full of human bones have been discovered near Damascus as Syrian locals find themselves unearthing the horrors of Assad’s regime.

An alleged mass grave in the Baghdad Bridge area near the Syrian capital features deep trenches filled with human remains, believed to belong to slaughtered civilians.

According to an Anadolu Ajansi report, evidence suggests that victims, including those who died from torture and the harrowing conditions in prisons such as the notorious Sednaya, were buried there.

Horror footage of the discovery shows piles of bodies layered atop one another, with sacks marked with prison codes and what are believed to be the names of the deceased.

In one deep trench, eight sacks filled with human remains were recovered, giving chilling insight into to the severity of Assad’s atrocities.

Kurdistan24 claimed thousands of bodies were found in Baghdad Bridge following a spate of mass grave sites being uncovered across Syria amid a search and recovery effort following the collapse of the regime.

A local witness told the Kurdish broadcaster: ‘These are human remains of someone killed by the Syrian regime. These graves contain nearly five to six thousand bodies.’

The witness pointed to one sack labeled ‘Raad Mahmoud, Prisoner #125,’ and explained: ‘This body, along with thousands of others, was brought here by Assad’s regime. They dug pits and buried them in mass graves.’

They then went on to offer a chilling account of the systematic nature of the mass burials, claiming: ‘I witnessed the process with my own eyes as the Syrian regime brought bodies here daily by vehicle, dug pits, and later buried them.’

The discovery comes as another mass grave was uncovered in Damascus’ Tadamon district on Sunday.

Brutal killings took place in Tadamon until very recently, with residents claiming they had regularly seen Syrian security forces bring men to the area, heard bursts of gunshots and smelled burning flesh afterwards.

Reporters on the ground in the Syrian district stumbled across bones piles with trash, scorched plastic and dirty clothes, and saw children playing with what appeared to be rib bones and femurs.

Mohammad al-Darra, an elderly man from Tadamon, said that year after year, he saw cars driven by Syrian armed forces bring ‘tied up people’ to a tiny alley parallel to where the 2013 Tadamon massacre is thought to have taken place.

‘At night you would hear it. Every shot fired went into a man,’ he said, and referring to the filthy street and the gutted-out buildings alongside it, he added, ‘and this was the graveyard for all the corpses.’

Khaled Houriya, who runs a mechanic shop in the area, said he too had often heard gunshots and smelled burning flesh after returning to the neighborhood in 2019.

‘This was known as execution street. Anyone who came to this street was considered lost,’ he said, adding that security forces often asked his neighbours to help them dig mass graves.

‘Those things won’t leave our memory. Corpses all over the floor – it became normal for people,’ Houriya said.

The grave is linked to a 2013 massacre captured in a video that was released in 2022.

Chilling footage showed men in military fatigues leading blindfolded individuals to a large pit, shooting them, and shoving their bodies into the grave.

The US State Department said in April 2022 statement regarding the video, that the massacre ‘reportedly killed hundreds of Syrian civilians’.

The suspected location of the grave was identified by researchers at Human Rights Watch by matching satellite imagery with the scene in the video.

While a full examination of the site has yet to take place, the group has already found many traces of killings.

‘We found human remains, bones, part of a skull, fingers, ribs, strewn around the entire area surrounding the mass grave, which shows that really a lot more happened here than what we already knew,’ Hiba Zayadin, the Syria researcher at advocacy group Human Rights Watch, said.  

Residents of Tadamon said they had not dared speak out during Assad’s rule, when criticism of the authorities was severely repressed. 

‘We couldn’t say anything, otherwise they would burn your house down, or kill your son. It was ugly, ugly, ugly,’ one local said.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when Assad’s crackdown on protests against him spiralled into a full-scale war that drew in regional powers.

Both Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, have been accused by rights groups and governments of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country’s notorious prison system.

Assad repeatedly denied carrying out violations and painted his detractors as terrorists.

But now, a week after the president’s ouster, residents and rights researchers hope the site can be cordoned off and those responsible for the killings held accountable.

‘It is urgent that this location is secured, that the mass grave is exhumed, that international relevant bodies are allowed unhindered access to this area to be able to do this work carefully, cautiously and well,’ said

Zayadin said there was a risk that the mass grave had already been emptied by the forces of Assad’s toppled government. 

‘Families deserve to know what happened here,’ she said.