Mass grave containing 3500 victims of ISIS found
Mass grave containing 3,500 victims of ISIS – which could ‘hold the answers’ to the fate of executed US hostages – discovered in the ‘caliphate capital’ Raqqa in Syria
A mass grave filled with the bodies of 3,500 people has been found in the former ISIS stronghold of Raqqa.
First responders found two foot deep graves just outside the Syrian city in the al-Fukheikha agricultural suburb last month, more than a year after US-backed forces captured the city from ISIS.
Experts believe the site, the largest mass grave found in the region, could help identify several thousand people who are believed to have been murdered by ISIS, but whose fate remains unknown.
A mass grave filled with the bodies of 3,500 people has been found in the former ISIS stronghold of Raqqa.
First responders found two foot deep graves just outside the Syrian city in the al-Fukheikha agricultural suburb last month, more than a year after US-backed forces captured the city from ISIS.
Experts believe the site, the largest mass grave found in the region, could help identify several thousand people who are believed to have been murdered by ISIS, but whose fate remains unknown.
Several dozen mounds of dirt lined one side of the plot, where more than 120 bodies have already been dug up by the Rapid Response Division of Raqqa’s civil defence service.
‘These are individual graves, but behind us, by the trees, are the mass graves of those executed by Daesh (IS),’ said Asaad Mohammad, the 56-year-old forensic assistant at the site.
‘There are some 2,500-3,000 bodies estimated there, plus between 900 and 1,100 bodies in the individual graves, so at least 3,500 total.’
Eight other mass graves have been identified around northern Syria, from which 900 bodies have been exhumed.
Some of the bodies were so badly decomposed that the bags had to be weighted down with stones to stop them flying away in the wind.
Since the Raqqa division began digging up graves in January 2018, it has recovered more than 3,800 bodies. Just 560 have been formally identified and handed over to families for a proper burial, the force’s supervisor Turki al-Ali said.