The head of Syria’s commission for missing persons said Monday that more than 300,000 people may have disappeared during decades of Assad family rule and the country’s civil war.
Mohammed Reda Jalkhi, head of the commission created in May, said the body's mandate ranged from 1970, the year Hafez Assad took power, to the present day and had no timeframe for completing its work.
"Our estimates of the number of missing range between 120,000 and 300,000 people, and it could be more," he told state news agency SANA.
Tens of thousands of people were detained or disappeared during the Syrian civil war alone, which erupted in 2011 after a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests by Bashar Assad, who was ousted in December.
During the war, all sides were accused of atrocities, including the Daesh terrorist group, which seized large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq, and committed widespread abuses, including executions.
