Authorities uncover mass grave left by ISIS in Syria’s Palmyra
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Syrian authorities found a mass grave in Palmyra, a city in central Syria, left by the Islamic State Organization (ISIS) when it once controlled the city.
State-run SANA News Agency said on October 21 that relevant authorities found the mass grave with 12 bodies of victims near the second-century Roman amphitheater.
The remains of the buried people were taken to hospital morgues in the area for the bodies to be identified before handing them to their families.
The ISIS controlled Palmyra in the period between 2015 and 2016 to be later (between 2016 and 2017) liberated by Syrian government forces supported by alleys including Russia and pro-Iranian militias.
The Associated Press listed about 72 mass graves around Syria and Iraq that the so-called ISIS caliphate left.
In July, the Civil Administration in the city of Manbij in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria said it had recovered 29 bodies, including women, from an uncovered mass grave dating back to the period when the city was under the control of ISIS.
The AANES was first formed in 2014 in the Kurdish-majority regions of Afrin, Kobani and Jazira in northern Syria following the withdrawal of the government forces. Later, it was expanded to Manbij, Tabqa, Raqqa, Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor after the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) defeated ISIS militarily.
After ISIS took control of Manbij in early 2014, it carried out a campaign in which it arrested hundreds of the city’s residents on various charges, and took the basement under al-Madina hotel as a prison for it.
It also conducted mass executions of prisoners and buried them in mass graves, according to residents of the area.