51 bodies recovered from a mass grave in Raqqa

Bodies of 51 people murdered by ISIS have been unearthed from a mass grave in Raqqa.

51 corpses have been recovered from a mass grave in the region of Til Zedan east of Raqqa city.

Yasır Hamis from Raqqa Emergency Response Teams said that the mass grave in Til Zedan area, located between al-Samra and Hamrat villages, contains at least 200 corpses. He told that remains of 51 people have been recovered so far and their work continues.

Hamis pointed out that this mass grave was more sensitive in comparison to the mass graves in other parts of Raqqa as victims were piled up over each other in this one. He noted that they were working with utmost sensitivity to make sure that bones are not mingled.

According to Hamis, the digging might take a long time as three corpses are exhumed each day.

He added that the remains in the mass grave belong to civilians aged between 25 and 35 who were murdered by ISIS mercenaries during their bloody reign in the city.

Raqqa was the city ISIS jihadists proclaimed the capital of their so-called caliphate. It is also one of the cities which suffered most and witnessed inhuman massacres, beheading, violence difficult to express with words.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces liberated the Raqqa city on 20 October 2017. Since then the city has begun to rebuild itself. Some 85% of the city and its infrastructures had been destroyed by ISIS, yet the deepest destruction had to do with life itself. Some of the survivors of the dark years of the Caliphate say that life stopped during those times.

Yet, life prevailed. And the newly declared Autonomous Administration has been working since the liberation of the city to rebuild it.

Within the scope of the coordinated activities of the Raqqa Civil Assembly and the People's Municipality, roads were re-opened, houses and water were started to be supplied to the neighborhoods and the war debris removed.

With the reconstruction of the city and the development of a free and common way of living, 700,000 people who had fled ISIS have returned to their homes.

With the increase of the population, the reconstruction works accelerated. The People's Municipality of Raqqa announced an amnesty for those who had repaired their destroyed houses without permission and offered assistance to put the houses at norm.

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