A mass grave containing the remains of at least 100,000 victims tortured and murdered during the brutal regime of ousted President Bashar al-Assad has been uncovered near Damascus, as reported by the leader of a Syrian advocacy organization based in the US. The head of the group claimed that bulldozers were used to compress the bodies in order to “fit them in.”

Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), confirmed that the victims were discovered in al-Qutayfah, located approximately 25 miles north of Damascus.

“One hundred thousand is the most conservative estimate,” Moustafa explained to Reuters regarding the number of bodies he believed were dumped at the site. “It’s a very, very extremely, almost unfairly conservative estimate.”

Moustafa cautioned that this was just one of eight mass graves that were created by Assad’s fallen regime.

The mass grave at al-Qutayfah is composed of several trenches, each believed to be between 19 and 23 feet deep and over 10 feet wide.

Moustafa, who arrived in Syria after Assad fled to Moscow the previous week, suggested that the grave was likely the result of the military’s involvement under the regime.

“[The Syrian air force was] in charge of bodies going from military hospitals — 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,” Moustafa recounted.

Moustafa noted that the grave matched accounts given by funeral workers who had been forced to unload the bodies and later fled Syria, sharing their testimony of the atrocities committed under Assad.

The Syrian Emergency Task Force has also spoken to bulldozer operators who were ordered by the regime to compact the bodies “down to fit them in” the graves.

The discovery is believed to be one of the largest mass graves uncovered in modern times.

A mass grave from the Stalin era in Ukraine, located in the Bykivnia forest near Kyiv, is estimated to hold over 200,000 political prisoners executed during that period, according to the BBC.

In addition to the mass grave in al-Qutayfah, reports have surfaced of numerous bodies found in the Daraa governorate, in southern Syria.

Disturbing footage from Agence France-Presse shows the bodies arranged in bags outside the grave, with men extracting bones from the dirt at the site.

The bodies uncovered across Syria are believed to be among the more than 150,000 individuals who disappeared under Assad’s regime, which regularly detained and tortured opposition figures, locking them away in prisons where they were never seen again, according to the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP).

The actual number of those missing during and after the civil war remains unverified.

Jenifer Fenton, a spokesperson for the United Nations’ special envoy to Syria, urged the rebels to gather crucial documents linked to Assad’s detention centers and mass graves in order to ensure justice and accountability.

“We must prioritize accounting for the missing, ensuring the families receive the clarity and recognition they desperately need,” she said in a statement.

The Syrian rebels, led by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, have pledged to hold Assad’s regime accountable for the alleged war crimes and human rights violations.

{Matzav.com}