Thousands of bodies have been discovered in a mass grave near the Syrian capital Damascus. Mouaz Moustafa, the head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a US-based Syrian advocacy organisation, said in an interview with Reuters news agency that at least 100,000 people were killed by ousted President Bashar al-Assad and his predecessor (and father) Hafez. That number has not been independently verified. It is known, however, that some 130,000 people went missing under the Assad regime. An unknown proportion of these ended up in the infamous Sednaya prison just outside Damascus, where prisoners were tortured to death or executed. Estimates of how many people have died since the start of the civil war run to over 600,000.
The Netherlands' demand for Russia to close its military base in Syria before discussing easing sanctions with the new leaders is shared by several foreign ministers, EU foreign chief Kaja Kallas said. ‘We will raise this condition in talks with the new leaders at different levels,’ Kallas said on Monday at a closing press conference after the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. Before the start of that meeting, Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp put that condition on the table. According to Kallas, more EU ministers want the new Syrian leadership to ‘get rid of Russian influence in Syria’. It is a base for the Russians to carry out actions in Africa, but also in Russia's southern neighbours. ‘This is certainly also a concern for European security,’ he said. Several Arab countries also feel the same way, Kallas heard when she was in Jordan this weekend to discuss developments in Syria with a number of Arab leaders. They too have concerns about Russian influence in Syria ‘which they do not need and do not want there’, the EU foreign chief said. She said it is certainly an issue on which the EU can cooperate with a number of Arab countries.
The leader of Syria's main rebel group, Ahmed al-Sharaa, wants all the country's armed groups to merge into one army. He said this in talks with representatives of the country's Druze minority. After the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, one of the big questions is how Syria's many armed groups do not descend into conflict among themselves. Al-Sharaa plans to disband the various ‘armed combat groups and incorporate the fighters into a national army’, which should fall under the defence ministry. To what extent this is a realistic plan remains to be seen. For instance, the pro-Turkish rebel groups are on bad terms with the Kurds. Even after Assad fled the country, fighting between them still took place in the northern city of Manbij. Only after mediation by the United States did it come to a shaky ceasefire, which allowed Kurds to retreat towards the autonomous Kurdish region of Rojava, further to the east of the country. Talking to the Druze, a small population group that feels threatened by Sunni radicals, Al-Sharaa further said there should be ‘a social contract by which the different ethnic groups live together’. Among the Druze living in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, there are increasing calls for them to join that country.
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