Live: Over 100,000 bodies found in mass grave near Damascus

The first flight since the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad departed from Damascus Airport to Aleppo in the north on Wednesday.

A total of 32 passengers, including journalists, were on board.

Assad fled Syria as a swift rebel offensive seized city after city from his control. His army and security forces abandoned Damascus International Airport on 8 December.

British diplomats have held talks with Abu Mohammed Jolani, leader of the Syrian opposition group that overthrew the Assad government.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK and expressing support for the group is a crime. However, British diplomats were photographed with Jolani, whose real name is Ahmed al-Sharaa, in Damascus on Monday.

This came after Downing Street insisted last week that it could still engage with HTS without violating the government's anti-terror legislation. 

Jolani met with Stephen Hickey, director of the Middle East department at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and Ann Snow, the UK’s special representative for Syria.

HTS said the discussions focused on the "latest developments" in Syria, while the foreign office told Middle East Eye that the talks aimed to explore how Britain could support a peaceful, Syrian-led transition process. 

Read more: Syria's Jolani meets UK diplomats, urges Britain to lift sanctions

Good morning, Middle East Eye readers,

Here are the latest updates from Syria:

• Stephen Rapp, the former US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, said on Tuesday that evidence from mass grave sites in Syria has exposed a state-run "machinery of death" under the toppled leader Bashar al-Assad. He estimated that more than 100,000 people were tortured and murdered since 2013.

• A UN envoy has warned that Syria's war "has not ended yet" as rebels stepped up contacts with governments that previously deemed ousted President Bashar al-Assad a pariah. The envoy said he was seriously concerned after reports of military escalation.

• Turkish rescue workers have ended their search for survivors in Syria's notorious Sednaya prison, their leader said on Tuesday, after no detainees were found in hidden cells.

Good evening Middle East Eye readers,

Our live blog is about to finish for the evening. Here are some of the most important developments today: 

• The United Nations special envoy for Syria has cautioned that the country’s war “has not ended yet”, pointing to ongoing clashes in the north between Turkish-backed armed groups and US-backed Kurdish fighters

• Geir Pedersen told the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday that “significant hostilities” had erupted over the past two weeks before a ceasefire was eventually brokered. He warned that any further military escalation could be “catastrophic” for Syria, which remains mired in instability despite the removal of President Bashar al-Assad

• The state of a mass grave in Damascus and statements by people living in the surrounding area suggest that the area is a mass crime scene and may have been the site of other summary executions, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday

• A French delegation arrived on Tuesday at the country’s embassy in Damascus, the first visit of diplomats from France since Assad’s overthrow, AFP reported

• Germany plans to hold talks with representatives of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Damascus, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday, joining the United States and Britain in establishing contact with the group after it led the overthrow of Assad

• The head of a United Nations investigative body has reached out to Syria’s new authorities through their diplomatic missions, expressing his willingness to engage with them and to travel to Syria to secure evidence of war crimes, he said at a press briefing on Tuesday

• Syrian caretaker Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir told Al Jazeera TV on Tuesday that Syria has very low foreign currency reserves

• A UN refugee agency official said on Tuesday that around one million Syrian refugees are expected to return to the country during the first six months of 2025 and urged nations to refrain from enforcing forced returns

• The United Nations has accused Israel of breaching the 1974 Disengagement Agreement with Syria after Israeli forces seized control of a demilitarised buffer zone previously maintained under the ceasefire

The United Nations has accused Israel of breaching the 1974 Disengagement Agreement with Syria after Israeli forces seized control of a demilitarised buffer zone previously maintained under the ceasefire.

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric stated that the presence of Israeli troops in the zone constitutes a violation of the long-standing agreement.

“The agreement must be upheld; occupation remains occupation, regardless of its duration,” Dujarric said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since declared that Israeli forces will remain stationed at the border until a suitable alternative is found.

The dramatic collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria within just 11 days shocked the world and positioned Turkey as a key player in shaping the country's future.

However, Turkish officials in Ankara remain cautious. They are determined not to repeat the mistakes made during the Arab Spring of the 2010s, which engulfed the region in chaos.

They also recognise the need for support from regional allies and western powers to stabilise Syria, a nation of 20 million people. Ankara has not forgotten the risks of the past, such as Syria potentially devolving into a fragmented state like Libya, where warring factions divided the country, or following the path of Egypt, where a brief democratic experiment was crushed by a military coup within a year.

Read more: Turkey seeks Saudi Arabia and UAE support for new Syria

Israeli armoured vehicles on Tuesday entered the vicinity of Saida al-Golan, a village south of the Quneitra governorate, according to local media reports. 

The area is beyond the disengagement line between Israel and Syria that was agreed in 1974. 

دخول دبابات إسرائيلية إلى قرية صيدا #الجولان بريف القنيطرة جنوبي #سوريا#فيديو pic.twitter.com/JA7Q3PTE9N

— الجزيرة سوريا (@AJA_Syria) December 17, 2024

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a briefing on Syria's Mount Hermon, a strategic location overlooking Damascus which Israeli forces seized in recent days, according to a statement from the prime minister's office. 

The constant gunfire and explosions were deafening. 

Amr, a 27-year-old conscript in the Syrian army, was stationed on the front line just north of Hama.

As he took cover, Amr quaked. The rebel offensive had taken everyone by surprise, and he was no warrior.

“My commanding officer told me to start shooting,” he recalled. “He said if you don’t start shooting the enemy, you will be considered a traitor and punished.”

So Amr began shooting - not at anyone or anything, just sporadic gunfire into nothingness to avoid punishment.

“We kept being told: ‘Don’t retreat, backup is on on the way,’” Amr said. “But everyone knew that was a lie. There was no backup.”

You can read Omar al-Aswad and Daniel Hilton's full report from Damascus below. 

Read more: The Syrian army’s collapse as told by the soldiers who fled

CNN has confirmed the identity of Salama Mohammad Salama, a former Syrian air force intelligence officer who appeared in a video report purporting to be a freed rebel prisoner.

Last week, the network came under intense scrutiny after releasing a video of its chief international correspondent, Clarissa Ward, accompanied by an armed rebel as they discovered a man locked away in a cell in a "secret" prison in Damascus.

In the video, Ward scours the prison, looking for US journalist Austin Tice, who was abducted in August 2012.

Ward stumbles on the “only locked cell" and finds a man hiding under a blanket who identifies himself as a “civilian” named Adel Gharbal, a rebel fighter from Homs.

He claimed he had been arrested three months earlier and transferred to the prison days before the toppling of President Bashar al-Assad.

After questions arose about the footage’s veracity, CNN launched an investigation into the man’s identity and confirmed that he had served as a lieutenant in Assad's Air Force Intelligence Directorate.

Read more: CNN confirms identity of freed Syrian prisoner as Assad intelligence officer

The European Union will establish contacts with Syria's new leadership and reopen its delegation in the country, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday.

Von der Leyen also said the EU would increase humanitarian aid to Syria. But she warned of the risk of a resurgence by Islamic State and said this must not be allowed to happen.

Kallas told the European Parliament that while the EU delegation - which is like an embassy - in Syria was never officially closed, there had not been an accredited ambassador in Damascus during the war in Syria.

A UN refugee agency official said on Tuesday that around one million Syrian refugees are expected to return to the country during the first six months of 2025 and urged nations to refrain from enforcing forced returns.

"Now, we have forecasted that we hope to see somewhere in the order of one million Syrians returning between January and June next year, so we shared this plan with donors, asking for their support," said Rema Jamous Imseis, UNHCR director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Imseis said that thousands of people fled Syria this month as rebels seized power from President Bashar al-Assad, while thousands returned to the country, mainly from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that he expected the European Union to support efforts to facilitate the return of Syrians who fled during the country’s 13-year civil war.

Syrian caretaker Prime Minister Mohammad al-Bashir told Al Jazeera TV on Tuesday that Syria has very low foreign currency reserves.

Current and former Syrian officials have told Reuters that the dollar reserves have been nearly depleted because Bashar al-Assad's government increasingly used them to fund food, fuel and its war effort.

The central bank's foreign exchange reserves amount to just around $200m in cash, one of the sources told Reuters, while another said the US dollar reserves were "in the hundreds of millions".

The head of a United Nations investigative body has reached out to Syria's new authorities through their diplomatic missions, expressing his willingness to engage with them and to travel to Syria to secure evidence of war crimes, he said at a press briefing on Tuesday.

"Our first priority would be to go and try and scope the extent of the issue, see exactly what is available in terms of access and potential evidence, and then see how we could best assist in preserving that," Robert Petit, head of the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM), told reporters in Geneva.

When asked about mass graves, Petit said his team has a significant reason to believe there are a number of mass graves. He added that while some evidence had been lost in Syria in recent weeks, it was too early to know the scale of the situation.

Germany plans talks with representatives of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Damascus on Tuesday, the foreign ministry said, joining the United States and Britain in establishing contact with the group after it led the overthrow of Syria's Bashar al-Assad.

German diplomats' first talks with representatives of the HTS-appointed interim government will focus on a transitional process for Syria and the protection of minorities, a spokesperson for the German foreign ministry said.

"The possibilities of a diplomatic presence in Damascus are also being explored there," the spokesperson added in a statement, reiterating that Berlin was monitoring HTS closely.

"As far as one can tell, they have acted prudently so far," the spokesperson said of the group, whose rebels led the ouster of Assad earlier this month, ending 13 years of war.