RAQQA (Syria), Feb 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Two feet deep, below a plot of farmland outside the Syrian city of Raqqa, lies a large and deadly legacy of the Daesh group: a mass grave holding an estimated 3,500 people.
First responders learned of the burial site in the al-Fukheikha agricultural suburb last month, more than a year after US-backed forces captured Raqqa from Daesh and as they closed in on the group’s final redoubt of Baghouz further south.
Several dozen mounds of dirt line one side of the al-Fukheikha plot, marking the more than 120 bodies already 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,” 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,” he said.
Eight other mass graves have already been identified around the northern Syrian city, including one nicknamed “Panorama,” from which more than 900 bodies had been exhumed.
“Al-Fukheikha is the largest grave since Daeshcame to Raqqa” in 2014, said Mohammad.
Since the Raqa division began its work in January 2018, it has exhumed more than 3,800 bodies, said the force’s supervisor Turki al-Ali.
Among them are 560 that were identifiable and were handed over to their families for a proper burial, he said.
The site at al-Fukheikha could help identify even more of the several thousand people whose fates remain unknown, including foreigners imprisoned by Daesh.
“These mass graves hold the answers to the fate of people who had been executed by Daesh fighters, who died in coalition air strikes, or who have been missing,” said Sara Kayyali of Human Rights Watch.
Even as the battle against Daesh as a territorial force comes to an end, there was much more to be done. “It’s likely the hard work is just starting,” she said. — NNN-AGENCIES