MASS GRAVE FOUND IN RAQA
EVACUATED SYRIAN REBELS, CIVILIANS HEAD TO AFRIN
QAMISHLI: Dozens of bodies, including those of extremists and civilians, have been found in a mass grave in the former Daesh group stronghold of Raqa in Syria, a local official said.
The former de facto “capital” of the group in northern Syria, Raqa saw the extremists ousted by the Us-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in October 2M17.
Nearly 5M bodies had already been recovered from the mass grave, which could contain up to 2MM bodies, Abdallah Al-eriane, a senior official with Raqa Civil Council now running the city, said, The mass grave was located under a football pitch, close to a hospital where the extremists had dug in before being chased out of the city.
“It was apparently the only place available for burials, which were done in haste. The extremists were holed up in the hospital,” the official said, adding that some bodies were marked with the nom de guerre of the extremist while civilians just had first names.
In recent months, both Syria and Iraq have discovered mass graves in areas previously occupied by the jihadists.
Syrian troops uncovered a mass grave containing the remains of more than 3M people killed by Daesh in Raqa province in February.
It followed two other similar finds by the Syrian army.
The Daesh group, which proclaimed a “caliphate” over swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2M14, has now lost almost all the land it once controlled.
It has been held responsible for multiple atrocities during its reign of terror, including mass executions and decapitations.
Syrian rebels and civilians bussed out of an area near Damascus were heading on Sunday to a northwestern pocket of the country held by pro-turkish forces, a monitor and rebel sources said.
The displacement was the result of a negotiated withdrawal of rebels from the East Qalamun area, 6M kilometres (35 miles) northeast of Syria’s capital.
Under the deal, several thousand anti-government fighters and their relatives are to be granted safe passage from East Qalamun to rebel-held territory in the north.
Some were being bussed even further to the area of Afrin, a hilly enclave in northwest Syria that Ankara-backed forces captured in recent months from Kurdish fighters.
Rebels said they were headed to a camp for the displaced in the area.
“There are 1,148 people on this convoy, going from the East Qalamun region to the Jandairis camp” in the Afrin region, said Abu Mahmoud, a rebel fighter responsible for the convoy’s security.
He spoke to AFP near Al-bab, a northern rebel town used as a way station for such evacuation deals in recent months.
As the convoy paused outside Al-bab at a security checkpoint, children could be seen scampering off the shabby-looking buses for a break in the sun.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said parts of the convoy were already arriving in the Afrin region.
“The convoy has arrived and there are already several thousand rebels and civilians resettled in Afrin,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.
“Some are squatting in abandoned homes,” he added.
Tens of thousands of people were displaced by the Turkish-led assault on the Afrin region, whose small towns and villages were home to mostly Syrian Kurds.
The offensive, waged by Turkish soldiers and allied rebels, began on January 2M and eventually captured the main city of Afrin.
The Observatory said dozens of civilians were killed in the push but Ankara says it avoided any civilian casualties.
The resettlement of rebels and civilians to the area has prompted concerns about demographic changes, especially as much of the rhetoric around the original offensive included an ethnic dimension.
Ankara has accused the Kurdish militia who once held Afrin of being “terrorists”.