No more room for the dead as Syria’s Aleppo is crushed

BEIRUT (AP) – The old Aleppo cemetery filled up a year ago. The new one filled up last week. Now the dead are left in the besieged enclave's streets, buried in backyards and overwhelming the morgues.

Medical officials secured yet another plot for the dead. But they say they have no way to dig graves with government troops now crashing into opposition-held eastern Aleppo, shelling civilians as they flee and forcing thousands to squeeze into a chaotic, devastated and shrinking pocket of neighborhoods.

“We have no more room,'' said Mohammed Abu Jaafar, the head of the local forensic authority. His department is so overwhelmed, the staff registering the dead pleaded with him not to take any more bodies.

“Even if I were to consider mass burials, I don't have the machines to do the digging,'' he said in a telephone interview.

Dignity in death has been lost as the rebel-held enclave that has held out for four years collapses.

For two weeks, government forces bombarded the area, killing more than 310 civilians, including 42 children, and up to 220 opposition fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Then last weekend, ground troops stormed into the 17-square-mile enclave, captured half of it and advanced on the rest.

U.N Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien pleaded Wednesday for access to eastern Aleppo, home to some 275,000, “before it becomes one giant graveyard.''

In some ways, it already has. Bodies have been left to rot on the streets. Ambulances and rescue vehicles can't reach them because they have been targeted or because fuel has run out. As troops close in, there are now more, multiple front lines all too dangerous to approach.

Residents of a southern neighborhood close to a government advance only learned that a body was lying in the ditches when a cat started eating at the corpse.

“A woman from the neighborhood came and reported it to the morgue. We still don't know who the corpse belongs to,'' Abu Jaafar said, holding his breath. “I swear to God I cried. And I am one who is used to horrific scenes.''

With eastern Aleppo under a tight siege since July, supplies and food are running out.