°®Âþµº

Mass graves have been uncovered in northern rural Homs, central Syria, and near the city of Sweida in the south, °®Âþµº's Arabic-language editionÌý on Sunday.

The graves are believed to contain the bodies of victims of torture and killings carried out by the regime of former President Bashar al-Assad.

Sources toldÌýAl-Araby al-JadeedÌýthat civil defence teams in Homs discovered four mass graves near al-Qabu village.

These graves contained the remains of victims allegedly killed by the former regime forces.

The killings have been attributed to foreign factions that fought in support of the Assad regime.

Specialised teams, along with civil defence units, were sent to the site. Several decomposed bodies were exhumed, and medical teams were working to collect DNA samples to identify the victims.

Another mass grave was discovered near the Kanaker road, close to Sweida city, in southern Syria, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported.

Marwan Azzi, a Syrian doctor, told the outlet that one of the mass graves sites discovered by the National Hospital had contained approximately 100 bodies, most of whom were detainees from the military, air force, and political security branches in the city.

Dr Azzi saidÌýthe discovery was unofficial and had lacked forensic or medical oversight. The mass graves have yet to be officially opened or examined by forensic teams, and no specialised medical committee was formed to identify the victims through DNA testing.

UK-based monitoring group The Syrian Network for Human Rights previously reported that 112,414 individuals out of 136,614 forcibly disappeared persons remain unaccounted for.

The number of individuals released from the prisons of the former regime did not exceed 25,000.

Dr. Azzi called for the protection of the new grave sites to ensure medical teams can properly identify the victims and return their remains to their families in "an orderly and respectful manner".

Journalist Ali al-Hussein echoed these concerns, calling for "containing the chaos" to allow specialised teams to carry out their work effectively and enable to identify the victims and help determine the parties responsible for their killing through collected evidence.