BRITISH and American victims are reportedly among the 100,000 bodies found in a mass grave in Syria following the fall of tyrant Bashar al-Assad.
At least five similar sites have been discovered so far – holding Syrians and foreigners who were mercilessly slaughtered by the now deposed Assad regime.
Some half a million people are estimated to have been killed in the country since civil war broke out in 2011 – although the real figure could be higher.
Mouaz Moustafa, head of a US-based Syrian advocacy group, told Reuters that 100,000 is an “extremely” conservative estimate of victims found in a mass grave north of Damascus.
The site in Al-Qutayfa, 50 kilometres northeast of the capital, exposed chilling evidence of the systematic disappearance of Assad’s enemies.
Moustafa said: “One hundred thousand is the most conservative estimate.
“It’s a very, very extremely, almost unfairly conservative estimate.”
He is certain there are more than just five sites with bodies including US and American citizens, as well as other foreigners alongside Syrian victims.
His claims have not been verified.
After visiting two mass grave sites in Qutayfah and Najha near Damascus, former US war crimes ambassador Stephen Rapp said: “We certainly have more than 100,000 people that were disappeared into and tortured to death in this machine.
“I don’t have much doubt about those kinds of numbers given what we’ve seen in these mass graves.
“When you talk about this kind of organised killing by the state and its organs, we really haven’t seen anything quite like this since the Nazis.”
Before the outbreak of war in 2011, Al-Qutayfah appeared to be nothing more than open land.
But timelapse satellite imagery and witness testimonies suggest the site became a graveyard of atrocities as early as 2012.
By 2013, long trenches — up to 50 meters in length — were dug under strict military supervision, hidden from the public eye.
And over the next several years, refrigerated trucks carrying bodies began arriving under the cover of darkness, dumping human remains into these pits.
Eyewitnesses described horrifying scenes.
Mohammad Abou al-Bahaa, a teacher performing military service in Al-Qutayfah, recalled the “worst smell you could ever smell” emanating from the area.
Soldiers told him it was from “carcasses,” though it quickly became clear these were human bodies, victims of detention centre torture, disease, and execution.
“I would see refrigerated trucks filled with bodies, some in plastic bags and others uncovered,” he told The Times.
One local told Channel 4 News of when he saw a female gymnast among the dead, still wearing her sports clothes, moments before she was buried.
Another, meanwhile, recounted how the fire brigade was once called to thaw over 100 bodies that had frozen together, enabling soldiers to separate and bury them.
“Blood would be pouring out the bottom of the trucks,” said a gravedigger near the site.
For years, civilians were forbidden from approaching the area, their questions silenced by threats.
The timelapse shows how the grave expanded dramatically between 2013 and 2015.
Historic satellite images reveal the creation of a 10-acre burial site, which was later surrounded by high walls and bulldozed to erase evidence.
In recent years, the area has been repurposed as a Hezbollah base, with army vehicles and communication equipment scattered across the grounds.
And beneath it, an unthinkable number of bodies remain abandoned and unidentified.
Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, told Channel 4 News: “Where are the forensic teams? Where are the experts to exhume and identify the remains? My friends and even family members could be buried here.”
Al-Qutayfah is not the only location to bear witness to the regime’s mass killing.
The nearby Adra graveyard, located in a Damascus suburb, tells a similarly grim story.
The mass burial ground was constructed following the United States’ infamous “red line” warnings in 2014.
In response to Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapon attacks on civilians, President Barack Obama declared that further use of such weapons would trigger military intervention.
Yet, weeks after Assad’s supposed renunciation of chemical weapons, satellite imagery reveals the construction of Adra’s purpose-built mass grave began in July 2014.
Rows of meticulously planned trenches and roads designed for body-filled lorries soon appeared, suggesting a chilling level of organisation.
The burial site, located near a government office, expanded systematically over the years, with grave lines appearing in successive satellite images until as recently as 2021.
The timing of the site’s construction coincided with Assad’s contested election victory, which saw his third presidential term inaugurated on July 16, 2014.
At the time, the international community widely condemned the election as illegitimate.
William Hague, then British Foreign Secretary, remarked: “Assad lacked legitimacy before this election, and he lacks it afterwards. This election bore no relation to genuine democracy.”
Despite the regime’s claims of normalcy, Adra’s graveyard became yet another tool of mass terror.
Witnesses interviewed by ITV say that the bodies buried at the site belonged to civilian victims of the Assad regime.
Blood-streaked trucks delivered corpses under the watchful eyes of soldiers, mirroring the practices described at Al-Qutayfa.
The Assad regime’s systematic disposal of bodies reflects the brutal scale of Syria’s conflict.
Of the 136,000 forcibly disappeared Syrians, at least 105,000 remain unaccounted for.
The sites at Al-Qutayfa and Adra represent just a fraction of the fallen regime’s hidden atrocities.
