Did Bashar al-Assad commit genocide in Syria? Over 1 lakh bodies recovered from mass grave near Damascus

More than one lakh people allegedly killed by the ousted Bashar al-Assad government were recovered from a mass grave near Damascus, according to the Syrian Emergency Task Force chief.

The mass grave was found at a site in al-Qutayfah, which is 40km north of Damascus. Mouaz Moustafa told Reuters that it was one of the five mass graves that he had identified over the years and that there are more that are yet to be found.

Besides torture and executions, Assad has been accused of chemical attacks on civilians as well as ethnic cleansing. The new regime led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani has vowed to investigate genocide charges and other war crimes committed by the Assad regime.

Moustafa said "one hundred thousand" was the most conservative estimate for the number of bodies at the site. These not only include Syrians, but also foreigners.

Moustafa who came to Syria after Assad fled to Moscow said he learned about the mass graves after talking to the people who worked at these sites before they escaped from the war-torn country. Citing bulldozer drivers, he said they were forced to dig graves and "squish the bodies down to fit them in".

People who were tortured to death by the Assad regime were brought to the military hospitals, he said. From there, Moustafa said, the intelligence branch of the Syrian Air Force was tasked with transporting the bodies to different intelligence branches before being dumped in the mass graves.

He also raised concerns about the preservation of the graves so that the evidences can be collected for investigations.