• About Us
  • Who Are We
  • Work With Us
Saturday, February 27, 2021
No Result
View All Result
NEWSLETTER
The Globe Post
39 °f
New York
44 ° Fri
46 ° Sat
40 ° Sun
41 ° Mon
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
No Result
View All Result
Home Featured

After Years of War, Iraq and Syria Struggle to Bury All Dead

Jonathan Fenton-Harvey by Jonathan Fenton-Harvey
01/19/18
in Featured, Middle East
UN ‘Appalled’ by High Number of Civilian Casualties in Syria Due to Strikes

Syrian men carrying babies make their way through the rubble of destroyed buildings following a reported air strike on Aleppo, on September 11, 2016. Photo: Ameer al-Halbi, AFP

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Syrians and Iraqis are forced to pick up the pieces after years of conflict, as they try to recover and bury endless amounts of dead bodies.

Workers dig deep in the rubble, pushing past the suffocating stench of rotting flesh – which lingers in recent battlefields like in Iraqi Mosul, to find every corpse and actually create space to bury them. Both of which prove a challenge.

Syria fell into civil war in 2011, while Iraq has suffered from infighting for over a decade. Both lost territory to Islamic State when it emerged in 2014. Yet the extremist faction is virtually eliminated on the battlefield.

In July last year, the Iraqi Army, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, finally reclaimed the key city of Mosul from ISIS.

Mosul’s Civil Defense, a crew of just twelve men, made brave efforts during and after the liberation to find and recover dead bodies buried in the rubble. Even now, the team still works six days a week, fishing out bodies from destroyed areas of the city.  

Within the Civil Defence Force’s headquarters, families come to them to request they recover their dead relatives.

“We are ready to do our duty,” Mohammad Shabaan, one of the workers, said, as quoted by GQ. “Collecting bodies, fighting fires, or cleaning streets. Whatever Mosul needs, we are here.”

Media reported that up until September, local medical facilities recovered nearly 3,000 dead bodies from under the rubble in Mosul. The number of bodies still scattered across the city is unclear.

“Dead body management in Iraq is a still serious issue, as bodies are said to be buried under the rubble, on the streets, in addition to the bodies received by the local health facilities. Dead body management is now a priority in Mosul, since more and more bodies were recovered from under the rubble and brought to the hospital and morgue, either by the military or by the families themselves,” Iolanda Jacquemet at the International Committee for the Red Cross told The Globe Post.

“There are also reports of an increasing number of mass graves being discovered in other areas recaptured from the Islamic State group,” she added.

At the end of 2017, Syrian forces discovered mass graves of dozens of ISIS victims. Other mass graves in former ISIS territories have been discovered across Iraq and Syria.

“Hospitals and morgues lack the capacity to accommodate all the bodies. Temporary and suitable burial places need to be identified, documentation needs to be provided to the families, and there is a need to ensure that unidentified bodies can be traced [and] identified at a later stage,” Ms. Jacquemet said.

Elsewhere in Syria, where nearly half a million estimated deaths occurred since 2011, civilians for years have struggled to bury corpses which litter their hometowns after the war.

Graveyard workers in the city Douma, near Damascus, have struggled to find room to bury the deceased since the summer of 2015. Cremation is not possible since Islamic traditions permit burial only. Therefore, bodies are crammed into multi-layered graves and labyrinth tombs made from mud bricks. One three-layered grave could hold around one thousand bodies.

Eastern Aleppo faces similar issues after bloody clashes between the regime and opposition forces in 2016. Many public parks have turned into crude graveyards for Aleppo’s deceased, as the city’s original graveyard quickly became overflowing with dead bodies.

Firas al-Khateeb, a Damascus-based spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), told The Globe Post “it is a tradition for multiple bodies to be buried together in Syria, especially for families,” with two or three-layered graves being common, due to burials being expensive even before the war.

Yet he feels that due to the amount of corpses from the war, the issue could “intensify and create overwhelming practicality problems across Syria, and this could also occur in current conflict zones like Idlib and Eastern Ghouta.”

While an epidemic disease breakout is unlikely, WHO Spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic told The Globe Post that workers routinely handling corpses risk contracting a number of bloodborne and airborne viruses –  such as tuberculosis, hepatitis and HIV, which could be a health risk in both Iraq and Syria. 

Mr. Jasarevic also warned that overcrowding in mass graves would drain already scarce resources in Iraq and Syria. He noted that other burial facilities should be provided if graveyards become insufficient and full. 

Even if Syrians manage to flee the country, they still face the degrading burial they could face at home.

In March, The Guardian reported that in Lebanon, Syrians are forced to bury their loved ones in crammed, overcrowded, graves, while they often lack financial means to pay for a burial.

“It is a real crisis,” said Mohammad al-Ahmad, mayor of Omariyah, where half of the local cemetery is occupied by Syrians. “Imagine someone coming to you who can’t find a place to bury his dead loved one. When he asks you: ‘So where do I go with my dead relative? In Syria I’m homeless, and here I can’t even bury my relative.’”

ShareTweet
Jonathan Fenton-Harvey

Jonathan Fenton-Harvey

Related Posts

COVID-19 vaccine
Middle East

Syria Health Workers to Receive Covid Vaccine From Next Week

by Staff Writer
February 25, 2021
Syrian children at a COVID-19 workshop organized by medical volunteers at a camp near the town of Atme.
Featured

Human Rights Watch Urges Fair Covid Vaccine Rollout in Syria

by Staff Writer
February 2, 2021
Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani
Middle East

Anti-US Chants as Iraqis Mourn Commanders Killed A Year Ago

by Staff Writer
January 3, 2021
An Iraqi Kurdish woman wearing the Kurdish flag.
Middle East

Iraqi Kurds Look on as Israel Befriends Old Arab Foes

by Staff Writer
November 29, 2020
Mass protesters in Iraq.
World

A Year After Unprecedented Iraq Protests, What Has Changed?

by Staff Writer
September 29, 2020
A young child walks barefoot at al-Hol camp for displaced people, in al-Hasakeh governorate, north-eastern Syria, July 22, 2019
Middle East

Alarming Spike In Child Deaths In Syria’s Al-Hol Camp: Charity

by Staff Writer
August 14, 2020
Next Post
Officials: 10 Syrians Die of Cold Trying to Flee into Lebanon

Officials: 10 Syrians Die of Cold Trying to Flee into Lebanon

People brought flowers and candles to commemorate the death of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova.

Russians Gather to Commemorate Death of Activists Killed by Neo-Nazis

Recommended

People lay flowers in central Moscow at the site where late opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was fatally shot, February 27, 2021.

Russians Mark Sixth Anniversary of Kremlin Critic’s Murder

February 27, 2021
What President Biden Should Do About the Uyghur Genocide

What President Biden Should Do About the Uyghur Genocide

February 26, 2021
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L) meets with Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in Khartoum, last August

Sudan’s Normalization With Israel Is a Win for Everyone

February 26, 2021
Ethiopian refugees who fled the conflict in Tigray gather to receive aid at the Tenedba camp.

Eritrean Troops Killed ‘Hundreds’ in Ethiopia Massacre: Amnesty

February 26, 2021
COVID-19 vaccine

Syria Health Workers to Receive Covid Vaccine From Next Week

February 25, 2021
Moria migrant camp which was destroyed in a fire in 2020 on the Greek Aegean island of Lesbos.

Pregnant Migrant Sets Herself on Fire in Greek Camp

February 24, 2021

Opinion

What President Biden Should Do About the Uyghur Genocide

What President Biden Should Do About the Uyghur Genocide

February 26, 2021
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L) meets with Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in Khartoum, last August

Sudan’s Normalization With Israel Is a Win for Everyone

February 26, 2021
Stolpersteine in Greifswald, Germany.

I Can’t Mark Where My Grandfather Is Buried, but I Want to Mark Where He Lived

February 26, 2021
Republican Senator from Missouri Josh Hawley

Trump’s Acquittal and Republican Senators: Not Setting the Bar Low Enough

February 22, 2021
Why Not Equality for America’s Puerto Rican Men and Women?

Why Not Equality for America’s Puerto Rican Men and Women?

February 19, 2021
Refugee child holding up a sign reading 'we are human like you'

US Asylum Laws Must Catch up With the Reality of Today’s Refugees

February 18, 2021
Facebook Twitter

Newsletter

Do you like our reporting?
SUBSCRIBE

About Us

The Globe Post

The Globe Post is part of Globe Post Media, a U.S. digital news organization that is publishing the world's best targeted news sites.

submit oped

© 2018 The Globe Post

No Result
View All Result
  • National
  • World
  • Business
  • Interviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Democracy at Risk
    • Media Freedom
  • Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Columns
    • Book Reviews
    • Stage
  • Submit Op-ed

© 2018 The Globe Post