On Wednesday, May 14, 2025, local residents found the remains of four civilians from one family, including a woman and two children, inside an abandoned water well located in the courtyard of a house in the village of Al-Aziziyah, affiliated with the city of Al-Safira, in the eastern suburbs of Aleppo Governorate.
According to information obtained by the Syrian Network for Human Rights from reliable local sources, the remains were discovered after the homeowners returned to the village and began work to rehabilitate and clean the well. They discovered the remains in the well during the cleaning process. Civil Defense (White Helmets) teams were notified, and they arrived at the site and recovered the remains. Initial observations revealed that some of the remains bore signs of gunshot wounds or torture, suggesting that the victims were executed or subjected to mass killings.
Sources indicated that the remains belonged to a man, his wife, and two of their children. The family had gone missing in 2014, during the Bashar al-Assad regime’s control of the village, according to relatives who were able to identify them. The area is currently under the control of the transitional government.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights notes that the issue of mass graves in Syria is one of the most complex human rights issues, with tens of thousands of families still unaware of the fate of their relatives who were forcibly disappeared during the years of armed conflict.
Legal Conclusions
- The presence of the remains of persons believed to be civilians killed during the armed conflict, particularly with signs of torture or gunshot wounds, indicates the possibility of extrajudicial killings or mass executions, which constitute crimes against humanity.
- Any tampering with the site or unlawful burial of victims constitutes the destruction of criminal evidence related to serious international crimes, which threatens the right to know the truth and hinders the means of justice and redress.
Recommendations by SNHR
- Immediately freeze the site as an international crime scene and prevent any tampering with criminal evidence by any party, until the arrival of specialized forensic teams and international criminal investigations.
- Involving Syrian civil society, and the families of missing persons and victims, in investigation and documentation mechanisms, and providing psychological and legal support to families immediately after identifying the victims.
- Launching a unified national and international database for missing persons, with the aim of matching the DNA of victims and helping thousands of families learn the fate of their children, as a central step in the transitional justice process.
The well in which the remains of a civilian family were found in the village of Al-Aziziyah in Aleppo on May 14, 2025