Kurdish-led forces hand over bodies of Syrian soldiers killed by ISIS to Damascus
The corpses were recently discovered in two mass graves near the town of Ain Issa.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Tuesday and Wednesday handed over bodies of Syrian soldiers killed by the so-called Islamic State. The corpses were recently discovered in two mass graves near the town of Ain Issa.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Tuesday that an “initial response team” from the Raqqa Civil Council recovered “nearly 15 bodies from the first [grave],” noting that the remains of about 40 bodies are yet to be retrieved.
In Ain Issa district, the Internal Security Forces found two mass graves for members of the 93rd Brigade of the Syrian government forces. The bodies were handed over to Syrian govt forceshttps://t.co/dGo7dWGnRC
— Wladimir (@vvanwilgenburg) September 2, 2020
According to local media, the bodies found in the two mass graves belonged to soldiers of the 93rd Brigade of the Syrian government. The SDF reportedly handed over the bodies to Syrian government armed forces in the al-Farhaniya village in the district of Ain Issa, where the graves were discovered.
Syrian government forces entered Ain Issa and other towns in a Moscow-backed agreement with the SDF following a Turkish offensive and the pullout of American forces near the Syrian-Iraqi border in October 2019.
Syrian regime soldiers have been killed by the Islamic State in the past. In July 2014, nearly 50 Syrian troops were killed during an attack on a regime base near Ain Issa.
Moreover, this is not the first time two mass graves were found near Ain Issa.
On July 21, 2018, local authorities in Ain Issa discovered four mass graves at the headquarters of the Syrian Army’s 93rd Brigade. The site contained the remains of Syrian soldiers the Islamic State had killed. At the time, the SDF handed over 44 bodies to Syrian government representatives.
Read More: US-backed forces hand over remains of 44 soldiers killed by IS to Syria
According to sources on the ground, Raqqa still contains dozens of mass graves and thousands of civilians are still missing.
On Aug. 28, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the local authorities in northeast Syria failed to advance efforts to find people the Islamic State had abducted even a year after the terror group’s territorial defeat at the hands of the SDF in Baghouz.
HRW called on the local authorities in northeast Syria to “promptly dedicate resources to uncover what happened to the thousands of missing people.”
The organization claims it has documented the abduction of Syrian government soldiers, Kurdish activists, and journalists affiliated with the opposition.
On April 7, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) announced the creation of a working group to address issues involving detainees.
Read More: Syrian Kurds to investigate thousands of detained, abducted, or missing persons
“Despite this positive step, it has not taken any other measures to prioritize discovering what happened to those apprehended by ISIS and last heard of in the group’s custody,” HRW said.
It should be noted that the SDC working group was not only created to deal with missing people kidnapped by the Islamic State, but also by Syrian rebel groups and the Syrian regime.
The SDF documents that since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, 544 persons have been kidnapped by the Islamic State, 2,368 by factions of the Syrian opposition, and 374 by the Syrian government in only the Kurdish areas.
According to United Nations data from 2019, there are an estimated 100,000 Syrians whose whereabouts are unknown in all of Syria.
Editing by Karzan Sulaivany