DAMASCUS, 19 Sept. - (ANA) - A mass grave containing the remains of around 100 people killed by the former Assad regime and its ally Hezbollah in 2014 has been found near the town of Al-Otaibah east of Damascus, the Syrian state-run TV channel Al-Ikhbariya reported on Thursday, quoting a source in the interior ministry.

 

It added that in recent weeks, dozens of mass graves containing victims of massacres committed by the former regime had been discovered.

 

The most recent was on Sunday in the Al-Tadamon area of Damascus, where Civil Defence teams recovered human remains belonging to more than five unidentified individuals.

 

In mid-July, residents of the town of Ma’an, northeast of Hama, found the remains of 15 people inside a well, dating back to a massacre carried out by the former regime in 2012.

 

The Al-Otaibah massacre took place in February 2014. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV and pro-regime media reported at the time that regime forces had ambushed and killed fighters from the Nusra Front, a hardline Islamist rebel group which was led by current Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa.

 

However, the Syrian Human Rights Committee (SHRC) said at the time that this could not have been possible, pointing out that rebel fighters did not move in the large groups shown in Al-Manar’s footage and that the victims were likely civilians.

 

It also pointed out that a teddy bear had been seen in footage of the dead bodies, suggesting that some of the victims were children.

 

The Syrian news website Zaman al-Wasl reported in 2014 that 175 civilians had been killed in the massacre, and quoted a survivor as saying that most of them had fled to Al-Otaibah from other war-ravaged parts of Syria.

 

Over 500,000 people were killed in Syria’s brutal conflict, most of them by the former Assad regime and its foreign militia allies.   - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/19 September 2025 - - -