GENEVA: Syrian families whose loved ones disappeared under ousted president Bashar Assad should not try to exhume their bodies themselves, which could prevent forensics experts from identifying them, the Red Cross said Tuesday.
After years of brutal conflict, families have an understandable urge to find and retrieve missing relatives’ bodies from formerly off-limits areas now that Assad has fled the country, but it is important to “follow all the steps correctly,” Christian Cardon, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told AFP in an interview.
The issue of the missing is “central today, but also for the future,” with proper autopsies needed to “eventually pave the way for peace and reconciliation negotiations,” he said.
More than 100,000 people have disappeared during Syria’s civil war, according to rights groups. They say most of the disappearances came at the hands of Assad’s side, which was overpowered by an Islamist-led militant coalition, causing the long-time leader to flee the country Sunday.
As militants flooded into Damascus, images on social media showed dozens of emaciated men, some so weak they had to be carried, leaving the notorious Saydnaya prison, which Amnesty International has condemned as a “human slaughterhouse.”
With families searching for their missing loved ones, alive or dead, Cardon appealed to them to “respect cemeteries and other places where people may be buried.”
“Key forensic processes” must be followed so victims’ bodies can be identified, he added.
The Red Cross is also urging Syrians to “protect the registry documents in which thousands of prisoners’ names were recorded,” along with “thousands of people believed to be dead,” Cardon said.
“There’s a real urgency today to ensure that in administrative offices as well as prisons and detention centers across the country, people preserve and maintain that vital information.”
“Anyone in a position of authority in Syria today needs to make sure the different buildings are protected,” Cardon said.
The Red Cross is in touch with “influential actors” in the country, including Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), the group that spearheaded the anti-Assad offensive, he said.
An ICRC team visited Saydnaya prison on Tuesday and “observed that many documents related to detainees held at the prison have been damaged and scattered in different rooms,” the organization said on X.
With thousands of prisoners now freed, the ICRC, which has around 500 staff in Syria, says it hopes to reunite as many families as possible using information gathered by its offices around the world over the years.
The organization has set up two hotlines, for both ex-prisoners (+963 953 555 431) and families seeking their loved ones (+963 936 033 628).
Its employees are also doing outreach on the ground in Syria to help families reunite.
It is a “puzzle” that will take time to complete, given that those involved have been through “major traumatic events,” said Cardon.
Red Cross urges Syrians not to exhume their own dead
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Red Cross urges Syrians not to exhume their own dead
- With families searching for their missing loved ones, alive or dead, Cardon appealed to them to “respect cemeteries and other places where people may be buried“
- “Key forensic processes” must be followed so victims’ bodies can be identified, he added
As Iran conflict spills over, Iraq’s Kurds say ‘this war is not mine’
- The Kurds, an ethnic minority with a distinct culture and language, are rooted in the mountainous region spread across Turkiye, Syria, Iraq and Iran
- “This isn’t my war,” said 58-year-old Satar Barsirini
SORAN, Iraq: On a deserted road not too far from the border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan, Satar Barsirini looked up at the sky, now streaked with jets and drones.
Iraq’s Kurdish region has found itself caught in the crossfire of a regional war triggered by US and Israeli attacks on the Islamic republic.
Dressed like the Kurdish fighters he once served alongside, Barsirini still wears the khaki shalwar, fitted jacket and scarf wrapped around his waist.
Though recently retired, he refuses to give up his peshmerga uniform as he tills his small plot of land.
The rumble of jets and hum of drones “come from everywhere. Especially at night,” he told AFP in the hamlet of Barsirini, dozens of kilometers from the border.
He described the “shiver in our flesh” as the drones hit the ground outside.
“I feel bad for the people, because we have paid a lot in blood to liberate Kurdistan... We just want to live.”
Irbil, the autonomous region’s capital, and the valleys leading to the border have been targeted by Tehran and the Iraqi armed groups it supports.
American bases there have come under fire, as have positions held by Iranian Kurdish parties — the same ones US President Donald Trump said it would be “wonderful” to see storm Iran.
But Iran warned on Friday it would target facilities in Iraqi Kurdistan if fighters crossed into its territory.
“This isn’t my war,” said 58-year-old Barsirini.
He recalled the brutal repression and flight into the snowy mountains after the 1991 Kurdish uprising that followed the first Gulf War.
- ‘Dangerous people’ -
The uprising was repressed, leading to an exodus of two million Kurds to Iran and Turkiye.
“When we fled the cities for our lives, we went to Iran. They helped us, they gave us shelter and food,” he said.
The Kurds would not forget that, Barsirini stressed, adding that they could not just “turn against them” now to support the US and Israel.
“I don’t trust (Americans). They are dangerous people,” he said.
The Kurds, an ethnic minority with a distinct culture and language, are rooted in the mountainous region spread across Turkiye, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
They have long fought for their own homeland, but for decades suffered defeats on the battlefield and massacres in their hometowns.
They make up one of Iran’s most important non-Persian ethnic minority groups.
A week of war has gripped daily life in Iraqi Kurdistan, residents told AFP.
“People are afraid,” said Nasr Al-Din, a 42-year-old policeman who, as a child, lived through the 1991 exodus — “thrown on a donkey’s back with my sister.”
“This generation is different from the older ones” that have seen “seen fighting.”
Now, he said, you could be “sitting down in your home... and all of a sudden a drone hits your house.”
“We may have to go into town or somewhere safer,” said Issa Diayri, 31, a truck driver waiting in a roadside garage, his lorry idle for lack of deliveries from Iran.
- ‘Shouldn’t get involved’ -
Soran, a small town of 3,000 people about 65 kilometers (40 miles) from the border, was hit Thursday by a drone that fell in the middle of a street.
There, baker Yussef Ramazan, 42, and his three apprentices, hurriedly made bread before breaking their fast.
But, living so close to the Iranian border, he said “people are afraid to come and buy it.”
He told AFP he did not think it was a good idea “for the Kurdish region to get involved in this war.”
“We are not even an independent country yet. We would like to become one, but we are nothing for now, so we shouldn’t get involved in these situations.”
Across the street, Hajji watched from his empty dry cleaning shop as the road cleared.
Before the war, the town was crowded as evening fell, he said, declining to give his full name.
“But after the drone explosion, no one was here. In five minutes, everyone left the street and no one was out.”
