Russia’s Defense Ministry today announced that their forces have discovered mass graves in eastern Aleppo territory recently captured from the al-Qaeda-dominated rebels, saying that the civilians within showed signs of torture, and that many appeared to have been summarily executed.
Syrian state media reported that the bodies were mostly found in prisons run by the rebels, and that the slain were “found to have been executed by gunshot at very close range.” The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the mass graves were found, but said they couldn’t say for sure how the people died.
Details are always difficult to confirm out of war-torn Aleppo, but there were reports of infighting among the various rebel factions within eastern Aleppo shortly before their defenses started to collapse outright. Indeed, many rebels blamed the infighting for the losses they sustained at the time.
Beyond that, months of artillery and airstrikes between the two sides in Syria also killed huge numbers of civilians, so it isn’t necessarily surprising that there would be mass graves. If the civilians do turn out to mostly be summary executions, however, that may suggest the infighting was worse and longer in eastern Aleppo than anyone realized.
Stop justifying and explaining away. First — Syrian Observatory have no sources onbthe ground — and the one person show is a joke. Second –trying to explain away the existence of mass graves is a tricky proposition. There are REASONS to believe that those people are not militants but civilians. The state of bodies CLEARLY INDICATE TORTURE prior to killing. These were not a result of infighting. Civilians were tortured in order to instill fear into male population that resisted “recruiters” . These were WELL KNOWN PRACTICES for years now. Anybody that escaped from there –told many, many stories. In many prisons gifls were kept to prevent parents from hiding them. Stories of their death at the hands of monsters –are in thousands. This is only the beginning of investigation.
It would be extremely wise to not jump to explanations that will exonerate the monsters. Syrian “Observatory” that is capable of only reporting what was supplied by terrorists, cannot be taken seriously.
As we speak, the same Observatory is now in business of defending ISIS. Turkey aviation was blamed for the desth of civilians — those that ISIS killed as revenge for losing their fighters. They do it in Mosul, and have done it elsewhere. But it is convenient to blame Turkish airforce, just as blaming of Russia or Syria. Why isball if a sudden ISIS being protected, and no rush to dislodge it from places itboccupied.
I suppose it will be rehabiliitated into “opposition” just as Al-Qaeda, perhaps dven change name. But with the change of administration –something will change. All one can ask for is, no more lies.
“Second –trying to explain away the existence of mass graves is a tricky proposition.”
Whether or not the mass graves do actually exist is an open question. Has any documentary evidence been provided for their existence?
The US made a lot of hay with claims of mass graves in Bosnia in the 1990s, and few people noticed years later when those claims turned out to extend several orders of magnitude further than the evidence.
That’s not to say there aren’t mass graves in Aleppo. There may well be. I wouldn’t be surprised. But their existence needs to be proven before it needs to be “explained away.”
Believe it or not, the Russian and Syrian regimes are likely just as prone as the US regime to making up stuff that makes them look like the good guys.
Mass graves are usually present in any highly populated war zone.
Dec 27, 2016 – The Real Syria Story No One Wants You to Know About
On this episode of The Geopolitical Report, we counter the establishment’s narrative on the conflict in Syria and the flashpoint of Daraa, a town near the Syria-Jordan border where the CIA, working with the Muslim Brotherhood, attacked police and set the stage for a conflict that has so far claimed the lives of more than 400,000 Syrians.
https://youtu.be/zGEc-CMsrQs