First responders in the city of Raqqa are continuing to remove corpses from the al-Fakheekha mass grave, recently discovered south of the city—the 14th mass grave discovered in the province.
On Wednesday, the team recovered 11 corpses from the mass grave, bringing the number of corpses removed from it up to 60, including women and children.
On Jan. 20, 2019, 57 workers began removing corpses from the grave, which is 1.5 km from the Euphrates River south of the city of Raqqa in a farm, for forensic research.
The first responders expect to find about 1,000 corpses in the al-Fakheekha grave, spread throughout collective ditches and individual graves. On that basis, a thousand graves have been prepared in land south of the Raqqa-Deir ez-Zor highway in the al-Jabel area, eight kilometers from the surrounding villages.
Alongside the corpses being removed from the mass graves, the team is also still working to remove bodies from under damaged buildings in Raqqa. About 20 bodies have been removed from various parts of the city over the past ten days.
The head of the team, Yasser al-Khamis, told the Smart News agency last month, that after removing the corpses from the al-Panorama district grave in Raqqa, the number of bodies recovered throughout the province since last September reached 3,310. Residents have identified 550 of them and delivered the remains to their families, while there were also the corpses of 850 “militants” among them.
The al-Fakheekha mass grave is the 14th to be discovered in Raqqa. There were 793 corpses recovered from the Panorama grave, 553 from the al-Rashid field grave, 402 from the al-Tajj collective grave along the old bridge, and 94 from the Old Mosque grave, 90 from four mass graves in al-Bedou street, and 33 from the al-Bayda park grave in the al-Nahda district, 27 from the al-Najirin park grave, 19 from the al-Nahda park grave, seven from the al-Jazrah junction grave, and five from the Children’s Park grave.
The International Coalition acknowledged at the end of August that 1,061 civilians had been killed — unintentionally — during the 30,000 or so air raids it conducted against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, since it started its operations in 2014.
The Syrian Network for Humans rights has documented 2,832 deaths, including 861 children and 617 women at the hands of the International Coalition from September 23, 2014, to September 23, 2018.
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
