In a mass grave outside Damascus the bodies of at least 100.000 people killed by the former government of the ousted president have been found Bashar al-Assad, claims the head of the Syrian operational group for emergency situations, Muaz Mustafa.
The mass grave is located about 40 kilometers north of the Syrian capital and is one of five mass graves that have been identified.
"One hundred thousand is the most conservative estimate of the number of bodies buried there." It is a very, very extreme, almost unfairly conservative assessment," Mustafa said, according to Reuters.
Mustafa added that he is certain that there are more than five mass graves found, as well as that American and British citizens and other foreigners are among the victims.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when Assad's crackdown on protests against his rule turned into a full-scale civil war.
Assad and his father Hafez, who was president before him, are accused by Syrians, rights groups and other governments of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions inside the country's notorious prison system.
Assad repeatedly denied that his government violated human rights and labeled those who accused him of it as extremists.
Syria's ambassador to the United Nations, Kousai Aldahak, did not immediately comment on the mass grave allegations. Aldahak took the role in January - while Assad was still in power - but told reporters last week that he was awaiting instructions from the new authorities and would "continue to defend and work for the Syrian people".
"Tortured to death"
Mustafa arrived in Syria after Assad fled to Russia and his government collapsed in the face of a lightning offensive by rebels that ended more than 50 years of his family's rule.
Mustafa said the intelligence branch of the Syrian Air Force was "in charge of transferring the bodies from military hospitals, where the bodies were collected after people were tortured to death, first to different intelligence branches and then they would be sent to the mass grave site."
The bodies were also transported to the sites by the Damascus Municipal Funeral Office, whose staff helped unload them from refrigerated tractor-trailers, he said.
"We had the opportunity to talk to people who worked on these mass graves who themselves fled Syria or those we helped to flee," Mustafa said.
His group spoke to bulldozer drivers who were forced to dig graves and "many times they were ordered to crush the bodies to fit in a mass grave and then cover them with earth," he said.
Mustafa expressed concern that the graves were not secured and said they should be preserved to preserve evidence for investigations.
