21 Bodies Recovered from Jails in Syria’s Aleppo amid Mop-Up Operations
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Syrian forces discovered as many as 21 bodies belonging to civilians executed in jails previously by Takfiri militants in Aleppo before their withdrawal from eastern areas of the recently-liberated northwestern city.
“The bodies of martyrs were found inside prisons belonging to terrorist groups in al-Sukkari and al-Kallaseh neighborhoods…Upon close examination, the civilians were found to have been shot at from a very close range,” Director of Aleppo Forensics Dr. Zaher Hajo said, according to the official SANA news agency on Monday.
The bodies were discovered amid clean-up operations by the army and their allies across the city.
In a statement on Thursday, Syria’s General Command of the Army and Armed Forces said the Arab country’s forces have returned security and stability to Aleppo.
The return of security to the city is a strategic development and a milestone in the fight against terrorist groups and their supporters, the statement added.
On December 15, Syria had announced the liberation of Aleppo, with President Bashar al-Assad praising the victory as “history in the making and worthy of more than the word ‘congratulations’.”
The Syrian security forces encircled Aleppo on July 17 after closing off the last terrorist-controlled route into the city.
Meanwhile, SANA said as many as 150 militants had laid down arms in al-Sanamin, a town in the countryside of the southwestern city of Dara’a, in order to fall under an amnesty law issued by President Bashar al-Assad, which pardons those ceasing to partake in the armed conflict against the country.
Dara’a Governor Mohammad Khaled al-Hannous then declared al-Sanamin “the first in the province…to be cleared of the armed presence.”
He added that some villages and towns in Dara’a Province, which bears the same name as that of its capital, were likewise about to be freed of militant presence.
Syria has been gripped by civil war since March 2011 with various terrorist groups, including Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL), currently controlling parts of it.
According to a report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, the conflict has claimed the lives of over 470,000 people, injured 1.9 million others, and displaced nearly half of the country’s pre-war population of about 23 million within or beyond its borders.