Assad regime secretly moved thousands of bodies to desert grave – Reuters
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The government of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carried out a secret two-year operation, dubbed “Operation Move Earth,” to transfer thousands of bodies from a mass grave in Qutayfah to a hidden site in the Dhumair desert northeast of Damascus, a Reuters investigation revealed on Tuesday.
The clandestine operation, conducted between 2019 and 2021, aimed to conceal evidence of mass killings and improve the regime’s image, witnesses told Reuters.
The agency spoke with 13 people directly involved in the operation, reviewed official documents, and analyzed satellite images showing both sites.
Witnesses said that for nearly two years, six to eight trucks filled with dirt and human remains traveled nightly from Qutayfah to Dhumair, more than an hour away.
The new site, Dhumair, contains at least 34 trenches stretching about two kilometers, suggesting that tens of thousands of people may be buried there.
The Qutayfah grave, first exposed by activists in 2014, held bodies of prisoners and soldiers who died in Assad’s prisons and military hospitals. By 2021, all 16 trenches at the site had been emptied, according to witnesses.
The government of Ahmad al-Sharaa did not respond to Reuters’ inquiries, and the agency withheld the site’s coordinates to prevent tampering. Assad and several senior officers linked to the operation reportedly fled Syria following the regime’s fall last year.
Rights groups estimate more than 160,000 Syrians remain missing. Mohammed Reda Jehlki, head of the National Commission for Missing People, said efforts to identify victims are hindered by limited resources, though a DNA database is being planned.
Mohamed al-Abdallah, head of the Syrian Justice and Accountability Center, warned that relocating the remains “makes identifying victims far more difficult.”