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Dr Muhammed Najem's personality did not match his subject matter. He was talkative, jovial and exuded kindness.

"As doctors, we're not supposed to feel fear," he told °®Âþµº. "We're used to seeing death, the casualties of war, but what we saw with the dead prisoners was like nothing else."

Still in his scrubs and surgeon cap, he took a moment of silence on a deserted bench outside the Damascus Hospital where he had worked for the past four years and now had become a morgue for Saydnaya's dead, one of Syria's most notorious prisons where tens of thousands are believed to have been tortured to death.

Dr Najem is currently a volunteer at his own hospital. When the Assad regime fell in the early hours of Sunday morning, many of the hospitals in the capital closed temporarily due to the rapidly deteriorating security situation.

A few doctors and a cohort of nurses at the Damascus Hospital, one of the country's largest, returned to work immediately without pay; their immediate task, ironically,Ìýtreating an influx of casualties caused by celebratory gunfire.

On Sunday morning, for several hours, the sky above Damascus was filled with lead. Around 500 people were treated at Dr. Nijaem's hospital alone for injuries caused by falling projectiles, with 15 of them dying within the first few hours of the Assad regime's overthrow.

By Monday, these injuries decreased and the hospital received the bodies of 35 people who were detained at Damascus's notorious Saydnaya prison.

The bodies have each been given a number, from one to 35, while they wait to be officially identified - all of them bearing signs of torture.

"[They had] marks from beatings to their faces and limbs, signs of severe torture. We've seen broken teeth, marks left by severe beatings, removed fingernails, removed eyes, burns made with heated tools," Dr Najem said.

They were found at Harasta Military Hospital where the bodies had been kept in salt beforehand to prevent decomposition, probably due to the guards at Saydnaya not getting around toÌýdisposing of them. This is usually done through incineration, mass burials or using acid to disintegrate their remains, likely to destroy evidence of their crimes.

After rebel forces led by Ahmed Al-SharaaÌý- better known asÌýAbu Mohammed Al-Jolani - flung open the doors to Syria's prisons, tens of thousands were freed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, but many more detainees are believed to have never made it.

Their stories, alongside the discoveries made inside the prisons, are beginning to reveal the true extent of the atrocities committed by the Assad regime.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said that around 100,000 people disappeared in Syria’s sprawling network of prisons and detention centres, and suggested that some of those might now be found alive.Ìý

The week, the head of the SNHR, Fadel Abdul Ghany, broke down on live television this week saying that all 100,000 were probably tortured and killed in prison.

Dr Najem took out his phone and showed pictures of the 35 detainees from Saydnaya now in his hospital.

"This is number one. On this martyr you can see the signs of entry by a foreign object, and burn marks … this is number two, it appears he has been dead for around ten days and there are signs of beatings to his chest and abdomen," Dr Najem said, patiently listing each case until the last.

He explained that most of the bodies, all male, had died at least 20 days ago. But the most recent, that of a boy in his late teens, died just one or two days before it was found.

The identities and causes of death of the Saydnaya 35 are yet to be officially confirmed, with post-mortems ongoing and doctors conducting DNA tests as part of their investigations.

The hospital has also shared photos of the deceased on social media, along with descriptions of identifying marks, so that their loved ones might find them and come forward.

This is how the body of 'number 35' went from a number to become a name again: he wasÌýMazen Hamada, the vocal critic of the Assad regime, although medical authorities have not officially confirmed his death.

Hamada was based in Germany and had spent years touring Western countries to speak out against the crimes of the Assad regime. He was first arrested after Syria’s popular uprisings of 2011 and was tortured while in detention until he was released in 2013, but returned to Damascus in 2020 and disappeared.

This week a body, allegedly of Hamada, circulated, which those close to him believed was the activist.

At least two others have also been recognised by their friends and relatives through social media. One woman believed her husband might be 'number seven' and came to the hospital’s morgue asking to see that number to identify the body. Another, a 17-year-old boy, recognised his father, number one.

"This has affected me, I could empathise with these people, as a doctor I was also detained once and beaten," said Dr Najem.

"Doctors are respected in every part of the world except in Syria, where they were humiliated, and so was every Syrian citizen under Bashar al-Assad."