A grave containing 100,000 victims of the Assad regime has been discovered in Syria.

Human rights activists have discovered a mass grave near the Syrian capital Damascus. There, they counted at least 100 thousand people who died during the reign of the country’s former president Bashar al-Assad. This is what the head of the Syrian human rights organization Syrian Emergency Task Force Muaz Mustafa said in an interview with Reuters

The grave in Al-Qutaif, 40 km from Damascus, is one of five mass cemeteries he has identified over years of research, the human rights activist said.

According to him, “100 thousand is the most conservative estimate.” He is confident that the death toll could be higher.

The activist says that among the victims are not only Syrians, but also foreign citizens: citizens of the USA and Great Britain. Muaz Mustafa said the bodies of those killed were transported from military hospitals, where they ended up after torture, to mass grave sites on the orders of the Syrian intelligence services.

Workers from the municipal burial service also took part in carrying the bodies. In particular, bulldozer drivers were “forced to dig graves and even ‘compact’ bodies so that they fit into the ground.”

Representatives of the Syrian government have not yet provided comments on this information.

Mustafa called for the graves to be preserved as evidence for future war crimes investigations.

We remind you that the Russian military presence in Syria needs to be reviewed, said the spokesman of the transitional government of the republic, Obeida Arnaout.

Bloomberg previously wrote that Russia is negotiating with the new Syrian leadership to maintain bases at the naval port in Tartus and the Khmeimim airbase.