The medics identifying remains from Syria's mass graves

More than 100,000 men, women and children were reportedly forcibly disappeared by Bashar al-Assad's regime.

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The head of the newly-opened Syrian Identification Centre is standing next to two tables, covered in femurs. There are 32 of the human thigh bones on each laminated white tablecloth. They have been neatly aligned and numbered.

Sorting is the first task for this new link in the long chain from crime to justice in Syria. A "mixed mass grave" means that corpses were thrown one on top of another.

The chances are, these bones belong to some of the hundreds of thousands believed to have been killed by the regimes of the ousted president Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez, who together ruled Syria for more than five decades.

If so, says Dr al-Hourani, they were among the more recent victims: they died no more than a year ago.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxnxg379ylo

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