Mass graves in Syria

A number of mass graves were uncovered after the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. The primary site was located in al-Qutayfah, approximately 37 km (23 mi) north of Damascus, with additional mass graves discovered throughout the southern Damascus countryside and in southern Syria. The primary al-Qutayfah site was predicted by investigators to contain the human remains of at least 100,000 people who had been systematically and extrajudicially killed.

Following the fall of the Assad regime in mid-December 2024, graves attributed to the rule of the Assad family, including both Bashar al-Assad and his father Hafez al-Assad, were uncovered by NGOs such as Human Rights Watch along with several academic researchers associated with the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the University of Amsterdam. Their regime conducted widespread extrajudicial killings according to Syrian rebel groups, Syrian civilians, and academic experts, particularly within Syria's prison system, resulting in hundreds of thousands of casualties over several decades. The International Commission on Missing Persons, headquartered in The Hague, The Netherlands, reported the presence of at least 66 mass grave sites across Syria.

The total number of disappeared persons since 2011 exceeds 100,000, according to the Syrian Emergency Task Force. Organizations including the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented approximately 80,000 confirmed deaths among the missing, with an additional 60,000 individuals believed to have died from torture.

A mass grave uncovered in al-Qutayfah in the countryside 25km north of Damascus emerged as the most substantial discovery by quantity, characterized by investigators as a centralized burial location for the Assad regime. Investigators estimated that the mass grave contained the human remains of at least 100,000 people.

Academic researchers, including University of Amsterdam genocide studies professor Uğur Ümit Üngör, described the site as “a reflection of the killing machine of the Assad regime”. Syrian Air Force Intelligence was identified as the primary organization responsible for transporting deceased individuals from medical facilities or prisons to the burial sites.

Local witnesses reported seeing security forces transporting bodies in refrigerated containers throughout the Syrian civil war. Religious leader Abdul Kadir al-Sheikha provided testimony about conducting burial rites for at least 100 victims within a 30-square-meter area, before being excluded from further ceremonies by secret police.

A second large mass grave was found in the settlement of Najha in the southern Damascus countryside. Initial assessments by international experts indicated the potential presence of several tens of thousands of victims. The site's complexity was heightened by its proximity to an existing cemetery, with investigators discovering that some victims were buried beneath previously established graves. Surface-level examinations revealed exposed human remains, including vertebrae and femur fragments.

Human Rights Watch's examination of the Tadamon neighborhood in southern Damascus revealed a mass grave associated with the Tadamon massacre in April 2013, along with additional human remains spread throughout the area bearing marks consistent with execution-style killings.