Khthon documents mass graves, atrocity crimes, and forensic evidence from conflict zones worldwide. Our work is strictly humanitarian and apolitical.
This site may contain imagery and descriptions of deceased individuals, violent injuries, and human remains gathered in the course of active investigations. Content is presented for accountability and documentation purposes only.
Khthon documents mass graves, atrocity crimes, and forensic evidence from conflict zones worldwide. Our work is strictly humanitarian and apolitical.
This site may contain imagery and descriptions of deceased individuals, violent injuries, and human remains gathered in the course of active investigations.
Khthon · Active Investigation
Since 2011, Syria's mass-grave landscape reflects two overlapping systems of violence — state detention and counterinsurgency on one side, jihadist rule and battlefield killings on the other — layered across a country where entire urban neighbourhoods have become unrecorded burial grounds.
Situation Overview
Since 2011, security agencies and allied militias have run networks of arrest, torture, and death in custody. Bodies moved through military hospitals and municipal morgues, then out to peripheral cemeteries or wasteland tracts for burial without records. In Damascus, video and document leaks revealed pits used to dispose of detainees and massacre victims from secret-police and militia operations — echoing practices around notorious facilities such as Saydnaya.
Farther east and north, ISIS turned towns like Raqqa and parts of Deir ez-Zor into execution grounds, dumping victims in fields, wadis, and ad-hoc trenches as front lines shifted. Years of bombardment and siege layered additional dead into collapsed neighbourhoods, making the urban fabric itself a burial ground.
GEOINT Methodology
Syria is a study in how different actors leave different burial signatures — each with a distinctive spatial logic readable from space.
Multi-Source Intelligence Fusion
01 · SATINT
Time-Series Analysis
Sudden trenching, cemetery expansions, and soil disturbance around detention nodes and military logistics sites are detected by comparing pre- and post-event satellite imagery across multi-year baselines.
02 · SOCMINT / HUMINT
Incident Chronologies
Detainee release testimonies, leaked perpetrator imagery, recovery team documentation, and local burial logs are fused to build chronologies connecting detention or execution events to specific earthworks.
03 · PRIORITISE
Access Windows
Because many areas remain inaccessible, we prioritise targets for ground-truth verification when windows for forensic access open — ensuring that satellite evidence is ready to guide teams on the ground.
MAR 2011
Uprising and crackdown — the conflict begins
Protests beginning in Deraa are met with lethal force by Syrian security forces. As demonstrations spread nationwide, mass arrests begin. Thousands of detainees disappear into a network of intelligence facilities. Death-in-custody cases begin appearing at military hospitals; bodies are released to families with instructions not to discuss cause of death, or are buried without notification.
2012–2013
Saydnaya and the detention killing system
The Syrian Network for Human Rights and Amnesty International document a systematic policy of torture and extrajudicial execution inside detention facilities including Saydnaya Military Prison. Satellite imagery shows new grave digging at Najha cemetery near Damascus — a site Amnesty later identifies as a mass burial location for Saydnaya victims. The Caesar Files — 55,000 photographs of detainee bodies — are smuggled out by a defecting military photographer.
2013–2014
Chemical weapons attacks and siege warfare
The August 2013 Ghouta chemical attack kills an estimated 1,400 civilians. Siege tactics are deployed against opposition-held areas including eastern Aleppo and Homs, producing mass civilian casualties buried in improvised graves within besieged neighborhoods. Video and SOCMINT from local civil defence units (White Helmets) provide the primary documentation of casualty events.
2014–2017
ISIS territorial control — execution grounds in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor
ISIS captures Raqqa and large parts of Deir ez-Zor governorate, establishing a systematic execution programme. Public executions are staged at Naim Square in Raqqa; bodies are left in public and later moved to field graves outside the city. Satellite imagery shows new earthworks consistent with mass burial at the edges of ISIS-controlled towns and along canal banks. After ISIS's defeat, international teams begin recovering graves across the region.
2016
Fall of Aleppo — mass displacement and urban burial
After a prolonged siege, government forces retake eastern Aleppo. Satellite time-series shows widespread building collapse across civilian neighbourhoods, with many casualties buried under rubble or in improvised graves within the urban fabric. Reports of summary executions during the final offensive are documented by UN monitors. The scale of destruction makes conventional GEOINT insufficient — the city itself is a layered burial site.
2017–2019
ISIS defeat and grave recovery operations
As ISIS is driven from Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, and the Middle Euphrates Valley, international and local teams begin identifying and excavating mass graves. The UN International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) collects evidence. Satellite imagery is used to locate previously unknown sites. Many graves remain inaccessible in regime-controlled territory; coordination between UN bodies and Syrian authorities is nonexistent.
DEC 2024
Fall of Assad — archives and mass grave access
The collapse of the Assad government in December 2024 opens new possibilities for forensic investigation. Security facility archives become partially accessible. Preliminary ground surveys at Saydnaya and Najha begin. International forensic teams mobilise. Khthon integrates newly available access with its satellite baseline data to support prioritisation of excavation targets and preservation of site integrity before evidence is disturbed.
Ongoing
Khthon monitoring — multi-actor burial signature analysis
Khthon maintains active analysis of Syria's multi-actor burial landscape — connecting detention and execution events to specific earthworks through time-series satellite analysis and SOCMINT/HUMINT fusion. As forensic access windows open across the country, our incident chronologies and site prioritisation support ground teams operating in one of the world's most complex atrocity documentation environments.
Browse Khthon's full catalogue of country and case reports across seven global regions, or get involved with our ongoing investigations.
