The Assad regime ran a clandestine two-year operation to exhume and secretly relocate thousands of bodies from one of Syria’s largest mass graves to a remote desert site in an attempt to conceal evidence of war crimes, a Reuters investigation has revealed.
The covert campaign, known internally as Operation Move Earth, involved trucking human remains from the Qutayfah mass grave near Damascus to an enormous new burial site outside the desert town of Dhumair between 2019 and 2021, according to 13 people with direct knowledge of the effort. Witnesses included military personnel, drivers and mechanics who participated in the transfers.
Reuters reviewed official documents, satellite imagery and eyewitness accounts that detail how six to eight trucks loaded with dirt and human remains made near-nightly trips for more than two years, creating what is believed to be one of the most extensive mass graves of the Syrian civil war. The new site, containing at least 34 trenches stretching nearly 2 kilometers, may hold tens of thousands of bodies.
A detail of what one witness told Reuters was an incomplete trench dug to take bodies in this mass grave site in the desert near the eastern Syrian town of Dhumair, Feb.27, 2025. (Reuters Photo)
