Syria’s brutal crackdown against pro-democracy protests took a chilling turn on Monday with the discovery of a mass grave in Daraa, the town at the heart of protests roiling the country for two months, an activist said. “The army today allowed residents to venture outside their homes for two hours daily,” said Ammar Qurabi of the National Organisation for Human Rights in Syria. “They discovered a mass grave in the old part of town but authorities immediately cordoned off the area to prevent residents from recovering the bodies, some of which they promised would be handed over later,” he said on the phone from Cairo. Qurabi said the Syrian regime must bear full responsibility for the crimes committed against “unarmed” citizens and urged the international community and civil society to pressure it to stop the “brutal repression” of its people.
