DAMASCUS: A Syrian civil defense official said Wednesday that White Helmets rescuers discovered unidentified bodies and remains in a medicine warehouse in a Damascus suburb, 10 days after Bashar Assad鈥檚 ouster.
An AFP video journalist at the scene said the warehouse strewn with medicine boxes was located just around 50 meters (yards) from the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, a revered site for Shiite Muslims.
鈥淲e received a report about the presence of bodies, bones and a foul smell at the site,鈥� White Helmets official Ammar Al-Salmo told AFP.
South Damascus鈥檚 Sayyida Zeinab suburb was a stronghold of pro-Iran fighters including Lebanon鈥檚 Hezbollah militant group before militants took the capital on December 8 in a lightning offensive.
鈥淚n the warehouse, we found a refrigerated room containing decomposing corpses,鈥� Salmo said, adding that some appeared to have died more than a year and a half earlier.
He said human bones were also scattered on the ground, estimating there were around 20 鈥渧ictims.鈥�
AFP saw men in white suits removing bodies and remains in black bags and placing them onto a truck.
Salmo said the words Aleppo-Hraytan 鈥� Syria鈥檚 second city in the north, and a nearby location 鈥� and numbers were written on bags where the unidentified bodies were found.
鈥淲e are going to establish the age of the victims鈥� then take samples for DNA tests 鈥渁nd try to locate their families,鈥� Salmo added.
AFP was unable to independently ascertain the reason for the presence of the remains or the identities of the bodies.
Since Assad鈥檚 ouster, a number of mass graves have been uncovered in the country.
The fate of tens of thousands of prisoners and missing people remains one of the most harrowing parts of the Syrian conflict, which has claimed more than 500,000 lives.
In 2022, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor estimated that more than 100,000 people had died in prison, mostly due to torture, since the war began.