Assad-era Plot to Hide Thousands of Syria's Dead Turned Desert into a Mass Grave

A drone view of imprints, made by bulldozer tracks, on the soil covering a burial trench of a mass grave in the eastern Syrian desert near the town of Dhumair, February 27, 2025. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
A drone view of imprints, made by bulldozer tracks, on the soil covering a burial trench of a mass grave in the eastern Syrian desert near the town of Dhumair, February 27, 2025. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
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Assad-era Plot to Hide Thousands of Syria's Dead Turned Desert into a Mass Grave

A drone view of imprints, made by bulldozer tracks, on the soil covering a burial trench of a mass grave in the eastern Syrian desert near the town of Dhumair, February 27, 2025. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
A drone view of imprints, made by bulldozer tracks, on the soil covering a burial trench of a mass grave in the eastern Syrian desert near the town of Dhumair, February 27, 2025. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

There was no mistaking the reek of death that rose along the Syrian desert highway four nights a week for nearly two years. It was the smell of thousands of bodies being trucked from one mass grave to another, secret location.

Drivers were forbidden to leave their cabs. Mechanics and bulldozer operators were sworn to silence and knew they’d pay with their lives for speaking out. Orders for “Operation Move Earth” were verbal only. The transfer was orchestrated by one Syrian colonel, who would ultimately spend nearly a decade burying Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s dead.

The order for the transfer came from the presidential palace. The colonel, known as Assad’s “master of cleansing,” directed the operation from 2019 to 2021.

The first grave, in the Damascus-area town of Qutayfah, contained trenches filled with the remains of people who died in prison, under interrogation or during battle. That mass grave’s existence had been exposed by human rights activists during the civil war and was long considered one of Syria’s largest.

But a Reuters investigation has found that the Assad government secretly excavated the Qutayfah site and trucked its thousands of bodies to a new site on a military installation more than an hour away, in the Dhumair desert.

In an exclusive report published Tuesday, Reuters revealed the clandestine reburial scheme and the existence of the second mass grave. Reuters can now expose, in forensic detail, how those responsible carried out the conspiracy and kept it a secret for six years.

Reuters spoke to 13 people with direct knowledge of the two-year effort to move the bodies and analyzed more than 500 satellite images of both mass graves taken over more than a decade that showed not just the Qutayfah grave’s creation but also how, as its burial trenches were re-opened and excavated, the secret new site expanded until it covered a vast stretch of desert.

Reuters used aerial drone photography to further corroborate the transfer of bodies. Under the guidance of forensic geologists, the news agency also took thousands of drone and ground photos of the two sites to create high-resolution composite images. At Dhumair, the drone flights showed the disturbed soil around the burial trenches was darker and redder than nearby undisturbed areas – the kind of change that would be expected if Qutayfah’s subsoil were added to the soil at Dhumair, according to Lorna Dawson and Benjamin Rocke, the geologists who advised Reuters.

Syria is dotted with mass graves, but the secret site that Reuters discovered is among the largest known. With at least 34 trenches totaling 2 kilometers long, the grave near the desert town of Dhumair is among the most extensive created during the country’s civil war. Witness accounts and the dimensions of the new site suggest that tens of thousands of people could be buried there.

To reduce the chance that intruders may tamper with the site before it can be protected, Reuters is not revealing its location.

After the initial story by Reuters, the government’s new National Commission for Missing Persons said it had asked the Interior Ministry to seal and protect the Dhumair site. The commission told Reuters the haphazard transfer of bodies to Dhumair would make the process of identifying victims more difficult.

“Each family of a missing person faces particular suffering intertwined with scientific complexities that could turn the identification process into a lengthy and costly technical project,” the commission said.

For four nights nearly every week, six to eight trucks filled with dirt, human remains and maggots traveled to the Dhumair desert site, according to the witnesses involved in the operation. The stench clung to the clothes and hair of everyone involved, according to descriptions from witnesses, including two truckers, three mechanics, a bulldozer operator and a former officer from Assad’s elite Republican Guard who was involved from the earliest days of the transfer.

The idea to move thousands of bodies came into being in late 2018, when Assad was verging on victory in Syria’s civil war, said the former Republican Guard officer. The dictator was hoping to regain international recognition after being sidelined by years of sanctions and allegations of brutality, the officer said.

At the time, Assad had already been accused of detaining Syrians by the thousands. But no independent Syrian groups or international organizations had access to the prisons or the mass graves.

At a 2018 meeting with Russian intelligence, Assad was assured that allies were actively working to end his isolation, the officer said. The Russians advised the dictator to hide evidence of widespread human rights violations. “Most notably arrests, mass graves, and chemical attacks,” he said.

Two truckers and the officer told Reuters they were told the point of the transfer was to clear out the Qutayfah mass grave and hide evidence of mass killings.

Qutayfah’s first trench appeared on satellite imagery in 2012. A Syrian human rights activist exposed Qutayfah by releasing photos to local media in 2014, revealing the existence of the grave and its general location on the outskirts of Damascus, and accused Assad of using the site to conceal the sheer volume of people killed under his leadership. Its precise location came to light a few years later, in court testimony and other media reports.

By the time Assad fell, however, all 16 trenches documented by Reuters had been emptied.

Russia’s foreign intelligence service declined to comment, and a legal advisor for Assad did not respond to requests for comment on Reuters’ findings.

More than 160,000 people disappeared into the deposed dictator’s vast security apparatus and are believed to be buried in the dozens of mass graves he created, according to Syrian rights groups.

The government has estimated the missing since the Assad family’s rule began in 1970 at up to 300,000.

Organized excavation and DNA analysis could help trace what happened to them, easing one of Syria’s most painful faultlines.

But with few resources in Syria, even well-known mass graves are largely unprotected and unexcavated. And the country’s new leaders, who overthrew Assad in December, have released no documentation for any of them, despite repeated calls from the families of the missing.

The National Commission for Missing People said that’s because many records have disappeared or been destroyed, and the gaps in data are immense even for well-known sites like Qutayfah.

There are plans to create a DNA bank and a centralized digital platform for families of the missing, but not enough specialists in forensic medicine and DNA testing, they said.

Reuters reviewed court testimony and dozens of signed documents showing the chain of command from prison deathbeds to morgues. Many of those documents bore the official stamp of the same colonel who oversaw the two mass burial sites: Col. Mazen Ismandar.

All those interviewed who were involved in the transfer of bodies recalled nights working for Ismandar.

Ahmed Ghazal, a mechanic, described nighttime repairs throughout that period in which soldiers ordered him to clear out his garage so the trucks could be fixed quickly and out of sight. Ghazal told Reuters he didn’t believe their initial explanation, that the smell of rot came from chemicals and expired medicine.

He saw the bodies for the first time when he jumped inside the truck bed during a repair job. Then, after a decaying human hand fell on one of his apprentices, Ghazal said curiosity got the better of him and he approached one of the military drivers to ask where the bodies were from. That driver told him they were from Qutayfah, and that the orders were to move them before Syria could open itself to international scrutiny.

Ghazal, who led Reuters to the Dhumair site, described the events he’d witnessed there in a methodical, deep voice. But he said he never spoke out at the time.

To talk, he said, “means death. Just by talking, what happened to the people who are buried here might happen to you.”

Reuters spoke to the driver as well, who recalled his conversation with Ghazal and said Col. Ismandar warned they’d pay if anyone spoke of what they’d seen.

Contacted through intermediaries, Ismandar declined to comment on Reuters’ findings.

“If I’d been able to act freely, I wouldn’t have taken this job. I am a servant to the orders, a slave to the orders,” the driver said. “I was overwhelmed with feelings of fear, the terrible smell and a sense of guilt.”

When he would return home at sunrise, he said, he doused himself with cologne.

“THE MASTER OF CLEANSING”

As an opposition movement against Assad’s rule deteriorated into civil war in 2012, the town of Qutayfah, on the outskirts of Damascus, was one of the few places firmly under government control. So it was to a military site there that people brought the bodies they found during the early days of fighting and Assad’s furious efforts to contain the uprising, said Anwar Haj Khalil, the former head of the city council.

By 2013, truckloads of bodies were arriving from hospitals, detention centers and battlefields. There were so many corpses that two government-owned food distributors – meatpackers and another company that distributed fruit and vegetables – redirected their refrigerated trucks to haul the dead to Qutayfah, according to Haj Khalil and a former brigadier general in the Syrian Army’s 3rd Division, which coordinated burial logistics. The former brigadier general, like many involved in the conspiracy, requested anonymity to describe how it worked.

But no one wanted the responsibility of burying the bodies, said Haj Khalil, who still lives in the area.

They needed a person to oversee the operations and the site. Ismandar began playing that role as early as 2012, according to multiple witnesses and court testimony. He was introduced to the 3rd Division crew as the “master of cleansing operations,” according to the division’s officer.

Ismandar’s actual title, according to documents from 2018 bearing his stamp and reviewed by Reuters, was budget manager for the Syrian military’s Medical Services. That unit was one of the most powerful government bodies, with control over medical care for soldiers and anyone taken to military hospitals, including thousands of prisoners whose deaths were recorded there.

Ismandar and a 3rd Division commander jointly settled upon a communal plot controlled by the military in Qutayfah, Haj Khalil and the brigadier general said.

Initially, bodies came in a few dozen at a time from two nearby hospitals. They had shrouds inked with names, Haj Khalil said. But within a few months, he said, he grew wearily used to calls from Ismandar after midnight to dispose of bodies from the Tishreen Military Hospital outside Damascus. Another officer would call Haj Khalil to dispose of the bodies from the notorious Sednaya Prison.

“Ismandar would tell me, ‘The refrigerator trucks are headed your way. Tell the bulldozer to meet us at the site in a half-hour,’” Haj Khalil said.

Initially, all the bodies from Tishreen and Sednaya were blindfolded, their hands bound with plastic strips, according to a bulldozer operator who worked at Qutayfah beginning in 2014. He said those from Tishreen first arrived in body bags, then in nylon bags, and then in no bags at all. Nearly all were naked, said the operator, who recalled his phone ringing at 2 a.m. with orders to start digging.

The early trenches dug by the army were too shallow, and “were partly the reason I was summoned,” the bulldozer operator said. “Given the nature of the soil, which is mixed with gravel and small stones, the odor quickly spread.” Locals complained about the smell and the dogs who were drawn to it, he said.

He said he dug each trench roughly 4 meters deep and wide, and between 75 and 90 meters long. His account corresponds to satellite imagery analyzed by Reuters: The images from 2013 when trench digging began in earnest appear to show shallow trenches, followed by longer and deeper gashes in the earth in 2014.

“I couldn’t sleep or eat for the first two weeks because of the horror of what I saw,” the bulldozer operator told Reuters. “But after that, something inside me snapped and I got used to it.”

All the while, Ismandar maintained a series of logbooks detailing the number of bodies arriving and the security branch that sent them, according to sworn testimony from a gravedigger named Mohammed Afif Naifa in German and US cases involving allegations of torture against the Assad government. Naifa told a German court that he worked with Ismandar from 2011 to 2017 and coordinated the burials of political prisoners. Naifa, whose testimony referred to Qutayfah but didn’t touch upon Dhumair, declined to speak with Reuters.

He testified that the numbers in the logbooks undercounted the true number of bodies he helped bury. The victims, he said, included babies and young children.

“This system of undercounting is how the regime disappeared and buried so many more people than were recorded,” Naifa testified in 2024 in a US civil suit that was brought by a torture victim against the Assad government.

Ismandar’s name appeared 73 times among thousands of documents from 2018 and 2019 Reuters found and photographed during a visit to a military police forensics office that was abandoned in December as the forces of Ahmed al-Sharaa, now Syria’s president, swept to power in Damascus.

An inked stamp bearing Ismandar’s name appeared on documents from 2018 and 2019 that track how prisoners were taken first to Tishreen Military Hospital and then – after death – to the Harsta Military Hospital to be stored. The documents don’t mention mass graves.

From at least 2013 through 2018, however, 16 burial trenches were dug at Qutayfah with a total length of more than 1.2 kilometers, the Reuters analysis of satellite imagery and aerial drone photography found.

Local roads were closed when the trucks rumbled into the gravesite. In 2014, one of the trucks broke down on the highway and everyone in the convoy en route to Qutayfah stopped, according to the 3rd Division officer, who accompanied the group. Naifa gave a matching account of the incident.

The 3rd Division officer said he took a furious call from Ismandar’s commanding officer, Maj. Gen. Ammar Suleiman: “Orders from Mr. President: Block the international road until help comes.”

Suleiman was one of Syria’s top generals and part of Assad’s trusted inner circle. He led the military Medical Services and was Ismandar’s direct commander. His involvement was also confirmed in Naifa’s testimony and by a commander of the National Defense, a paramilitary that reported directly to Assad and was involved in Syria’s most sensitive security operations.

Suleiman did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Reuters didn’t find any documentation containing direct orders from Assad about mass graves in general or Operation Move Earth. But the Republican Guard officer and the National Defense commander said it was inconceivable that Assad hadn’t ordered it.

“I challenge you to find anything issued in Bashar al-Assad's name,” said the National Defense commander. “He knew that reckoning would come one day, and he wanted to keep his hands clean.”

Based on the pace of deliveries over those years, Haj Khalil, the former council chief, estimated Qutayfah held 60,000 to 80,000 dead by the end of 2018. That’s when the trench digging stopped, according to the Reuters satellite imagery analysis.

By then, with the help of Russia and Iran, Assad was widely seen as the victor in the civil war. Still, he had lost control of much of northern Syria to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, and to Kurdish forces, who each carved out autonomous regions.

One evening late in 2018, Assad summoned four military and intelligence chiefs to the presidential palace to discuss what to do about the mass graves, especially the Qutayfah site, said the Republican Guard officer. The officer worked in the palace at the time and said he was among a handful of people to see the meeting minutes.

The military intelligence chief, Kamal Hassan, came up with the idea of excavating the entire Qutayfah mass grave and moving the contents somewhere more remote, the officer said.

“The idea seemed crazy to most who heard it, but it received a green light from Assad,” he said. The main criterion for a new site was that it be under military control, he said.

Military intelligence chief Hassan ordered weekly reports to be sent to the presidential palace, the officer said.

Reuters could not reach Hassan, who is not believed to be in Syria, for comment.

In November 2018, work started on a concrete wall around Qutayfah, according to the officer, former council head Haj Khalil and a Reuters analysis of satellite imagery. A February 2019 satellite image shows the wall surrounding the entire mass grave. At 3 meters high, it blocked any view of the site from ground level.

More than an hour away in the Syrian desert, in early February 2019, the first of at least 34 trenches appeared. A new operation had begun on a windswept military base near the town of Dhumair protected by a series of berms and fences and ringed by mountains on all sides.

OPERATION MOVE EARTH

Written orders said the mission was to transport dirt and sand to a construction site, according to the Republican Guard officer and Haj Khalil. Clean-shaven with graying hair, Ismandar gathered the drivers a few minutes before they started work on their first day. He explained that it was actually bodies that needed moving because the mass grave location at Qutayfah had been exposed, said the military driver.

It was called Operation Move Earth, according to the Republican Guard officer and the National Defense officer.

“The instructions on the first day were: No one carries or uses phones. No one leaves the trucks during loading or offloading of the bodies, on pain of death,” said one of the military drivers. “No one would dare violate the orders.”

The truckers generally left Qutayfah around sundown and were forbidden to exit their cabs during loading, the driver said. He could see Ismandar in the rearview mirror, gesturing to him where to park. His truck rocked each time the bulldozer emptied itself, five or six times.

“Some were merely decomposed skulls and bones, while others were still fresh,” said the Republican Guard officer, who oversaw the work directly. “There were also many maggots. Hundreds, if not thousands, of maggots fell with each dumping from the bulldozer's bucket into the truck.”

Then, on Ismandar’s orders, the vehicles pulled into a tight line and headed toward Dhumair, six to eight dull orange Mercedes dump trucks trailing the colonel’s white van.

An overwhelming stench traveled with the convoy. Drivers and mechanics invariably began their descriptions of those late nights with the smell that filled the air, four days a week, from February 2019 until April 2021, excluding holidays, snow days and a Covid confinement that in Syria lasted about four months.

After years of these journeys, the trucks’ payload was an open secret for people living near both sites, according to a resident who still recalled the odor. “Everyone saw us,” said one of the drivers.

Without excavation, a close estimate of how many bodies are buried at Dhumair is impossible. But a convoy of six to eight trucks making four trips a week means a conservative estimate of about 2,600 trips including the time off. Based on that and the size of the trucks, it is reasonable to believe tens of thousands of people could be buried at Dhumair, experts told Reuters.

By the time Operation Move Earth was done, each one of Qutayfah’s 16 trenches documented by Reuters had been opened, satellite imagery showed. In all, Dhumair contains 2 kilometers of trenches, according to Reuters calculations. The drivers and one mechanic said each was about 2 meters wide and 3 meters deep.

Reuters reporters who visited the site this year saw human bones scattered on the surface, including what experts identified as a fragment of a human skull.

Ghazal, the mechanic, said he encountered the convoy frequently. The trucks dated to the mid-1980s and were prone to malfunctions.

Their periodic appearances at his garage gave him a chance to discern two types of bodies headed for Dhumair. Some were decomposed and covered in soil. Others appeared to be freshly dead, including young men and women. His two cousins, who also worked at the garage, also told Reuters they saw recently deceased bodies. Reuters could not determine where the newly dead bodies came from.

Ghazal led a Reuters team to the site, which he could identify from having been summoned there for an urgent repair on a truck that wouldn’t budge.

“Everywhere you look,” he said, pointing at the empty desert, “there are people buried beneath the earth.”

Ammar Al Selmo, a board member for the White Helmets organization that helps find and excavate mass graves, was the first to alert Reuters to a possible mass grave in Dhumair. He said Qutayfah locals had told the White Helmets the mass grave there was empty and a witness in Dhumair reported the convoys with bodies, but Al Selmo said the organization is short on staff and resources and didn’t verify either claim.

After learning of Reuters’ findings, he said the White Helmets plan an initial visit in coming days.

A Reuters analysis of hundreds of satellite images taken over years indicated a color shift in the disturbed earth at the Dhumair site. But even the most sophisticated commercial images lack the resolution needed for a close examination of the soil.

So Reuters set out to take thousands of drone photos with the intention of creating higher-resolution composite images of Qutayfah and Dhumair, using specialized photogrammetry software.

The composites showed that bulldozers repeatedly passed over the trenches to tamp down the soil. They also supported Reuters’ key finding that bodies had been transferred from Qutayfah to Dhumair.

The analysis of the drone images found color changes around the Dhumair burial trenches that suggest subsoil characteristic of that found at Qutayfah may have been mixed in with the soil at Dhumair. That’s what could be expected if the soil dug up with human remains at Qutayfah was then added to the soil at Dhumair, according to Dawson, a pioneer in forensic soil science at The James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, and Rocke, who specializes in finding burial sites using remote imagery.

Dhumair’s final trench was filled in during the first week of April 2021, according to the satellite imagery analysis. By the end of that year, Qutayfah’s rubble had been flattened, in an attempt to obliterate any signs of the now-empty mass grave. In imagery for both sites, the earth still carries the scars of attempts to cover up the burials.

The intelligence chief who had first come up with the idea of moving the bodies to Dhumair received one of the last weekly reports about the operation in late 2021 and turned to the Republican Guard officer. “Syria is victorious and opening up to the world again” were his words, the officer recalled. “We want guests to come and find the country clean.”

Ismandar, like Assad and many others in the government, fled Syria after the dictator fell, according to two former military officers familiar with his movements.

With Assad gone, Ghazal said the mass graves were the first thing he thought of as he watched footage of thousands of Syrians streaming into Sednaya Prison in vain hope of finding missing loved ones. Some of the burial sites were already known, including Qutayfah.

In December 2024, several local and international media outlets visited the newly accessible site, including Reuters. So did an association for missing Syrians, which noted that Qutayfah had been bulldozed sometime between 2018 and 2021.

No one reported that the trenches were empty.

Ghazal, who still lives and works in the area, said no one ever came to search the site in the Dhumair desert that haunts him still.

So many Syrians, he said, were looking in the wrong place.



Ethiopia Builds Secret Camp to Train Sudan RSF Fighters 

Satellite imagery shows new construction and drone support infrastructure at Asosa airport in Benishangul-Gumuz, Ethiopia, January 28, 2026. (Vantor/Handout via Reuters)
Satellite imagery shows new construction and drone support infrastructure at Asosa airport in Benishangul-Gumuz, Ethiopia, January 28, 2026. (Vantor/Handout via Reuters)
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Ethiopia Builds Secret Camp to Train Sudan RSF Fighters 

Satellite imagery shows new construction and drone support infrastructure at Asosa airport in Benishangul-Gumuz, Ethiopia, January 28, 2026. (Vantor/Handout via Reuters)
Satellite imagery shows new construction and drone support infrastructure at Asosa airport in Benishangul-Gumuz, Ethiopia, January 28, 2026. (Vantor/Handout via Reuters)

Ethiopia is hosting a secret camp to train thousands of fighters for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in neighboring Sudan, Reuters reporting has found, in the latest sign that one of the world’s deadliest conflicts is sucking in regional powers from Africa and the Middle East.

The camp is the first direct evidence of Ethiopia’s involvement in Sudan’s civil war, marking a potentially dangerous development that provides the RSF a substantial supply of fresh soldiers as fighting escalates in Sudan’s south.

Eight sources, including a senior Ethiopian government official, said the United Arab Emirates financed the camp’s construction and provided military trainers and logistical support to the site, a view also shared in an internal note by Ethiopia’s security services and in a diplomatic cable, reviewed by Reuters.

The news agency could not independently verify UAE involvement in the project or the purpose of the camp. In response to a request for comment, the UAE foreign ministry said it was not a party to the conflict or “in any way” involved in the hostilities.

Reuters spoke to 15 sources familiar with the camp's construction and operations, including Ethiopian officials and diplomats, and analyzed satellite imagery of the area. Two Ethiopian intelligence officials and the satellite images provided information that corroborated details contained in the security memo and cable.

The location and scale of the camp and the detailed allegations of the UAE’s involvement have not been previously reported. The images show the extent of the new development, as recently as in the past few weeks, along with construction for a drone ground control station at a nearby airport.

Satellite imagery shows a camp with hundreds of tents in Benishangul-Gumuz, Ethiopia, January 22, 2026. (Vantor/Handout via Reuters)

Activity picked up in October at the camp, which is located in the remote western region of Benishangul-Gumuz, near the border with Sudan, satellite images show.

Ethiopia’s government spokesperson, its army and the RSF did not respond to detailed requests for comment about the findings of this story.

On January 6, UAE and Ethiopia issued a joint statement that included a call for a ceasefire in Sudan, as well as celebrating ties they said served the defense of each other’s security.

The Sudanese Armed Forces did not respond to a request for comment.

As of early January, 4,300 RSF fighters were undergoing military training at the site and “their logistical and military supplies are being provided by the UAE,” the note by Ethiopia’s security services seen by Reuters read.

Sudan's army has previously accused the UAE of supplying the RSF with weapons, a claim UN experts and US lawmakers have found credible.

The camp’s recruits are mainly Ethiopians, but citizens from South Sudan and Sudan, including from the SPLM-N, a Sudanese rebel group that controls territory in Sudan’s neighboring Blue Nile state, are also present, six officials said.

Reuters was unable to independently establish who was at the camp or the terms or conditions of recruitment.

A senior leader of the SPLM-N, who declined to be named, denied his forces had a presence in Ethiopia.

The six officials said the recruits are expected to join the RSF battling Sudanese soldiers in Blue Nile, which has emerged as a front in the struggle for control of Sudan. Two of the officials said hundreds had already crossed in recent weeks to support the paramilitaries in Blue Nile.

The internal security note said General Getachew Gudina, the Chief of the Defense Intelligence Department of the Ethiopian National Defense Force, was responsible for setting up the camp. A senior Ethiopian government official as well as four diplomatic and security sources confirmed Getachew’s role in launching the project.

Getachew did not respond to a request for comment.

The camp was carved out of forested land in a district called Menge, about 32 km from the border and strategically located at the intersection of the two countries and South Sudan, according to the satellite imagery and the diplomatic cable.

The first sign of activity in the area began in April, with forest clearing and the construction of metal-roofed buildings in a small area to the north of what is now the area of the camp with tents, where work began in the second half of October.

Satellite imagery shows a forested area where, ten months later, a camp with hundreds of tents was built in Benishangul-Gumuz, Ethiopia, December 15, 2024. (Vantor/Handout via Reuters)

The diplomatic cable, dated November, described the camp as having a capacity of up to 10,000 fighters, saying activity began in October with the arrival of dozens of Land Cruisers, heavy trucks, RSF units and UAE trainers. Reuters is not revealing the country that wrote the cable, to protect the source.

Two of the officials described seeing trucks with the logo of the Emirati logistics company Gorica Group heading through the town of Asosa and towards the camp in October. Gorica did not respond to a request for comment.

The news agency was able to match elements of the timeframe specified in the diplomatic cable with satellite imagery. Images from Airbus Defense and Space show that after the initial clearing work, tents began filling the area from early November. Multiple diggers are visible in the imagery.

An image taken by US space technology firm Vantor on November 24 shows more than 640 tents at the camp, approximately four meters square. Each tent could comfortably house four people with some individual equipment, so the camp could accommodate at least 2,500 people, according to an analysis of the satellite imagery by defense intelligence company Janes.

Janes said it could not confirm the site was military based on their analysis of the imagery.

New recruits were spotted travelling to the camp in mid-November, two senior military officials said.

Satellite imagery shows an area where trucks come and go at a camp in Benishangul-Gumuz, Ethiopia, January 22, 2026. (Vantor/Handout via Reuters)

On November 17, a column of 56 trucks packed with trainees rumbled through dirt roads of the remote region, the officials, who witnessed the convoys, told Reuters, with each truck holding between 50 and 60 fighters, the officials estimated.

Two days later, both officials saw another convoy of 70 trucks carrying soldiers driving in the same direction, they said.

The November 24 image shows at least 18 large trucks at the site. The vehicles’ size, shape and design match those of models frequently used by the Ethiopian military and its allies to transport soldiers, according to Reuters analysis.

Development continued in late January, the Vantor images show, including new clearing and digging in the riverbed just north of the main camp and dozens of shipping containers lined around the camp visible in a January 22 image. A senior Ethiopian government official said construction on the camp was ongoing but did not elaborate on future building plans.

Sudan’s civil war erupted in 2023 after a power struggle between the Sudanese army and the RSF ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule.


Gaza Girls Take Up Boxing to Heal War’s Scars

Palestinian girls and young women attend a boxing training session between displacement tents in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 9, 2026. (AFP)
Palestinian girls and young women attend a boxing training session between displacement tents in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 9, 2026. (AFP)
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Gaza Girls Take Up Boxing to Heal War’s Scars

Palestinian girls and young women attend a boxing training session between displacement tents in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 9, 2026. (AFP)
Palestinian girls and young women attend a boxing training session between displacement tents in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 9, 2026. (AFP)

In a makeshift boxing ring etched into the sand between the tens of displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza, a dozen young girls warmed up before delivering fierce blows at their coach's command.

Osama Ayub once ran a boxing club in Gaza City, in the north of the Palestinian territory, until it was destroyed in a strike along with his home during the war between Israel and Hamas.

After finding shelter in the southern city of Khan Younis, he opted to put his sporting skills at the service of displaced Gazans, crammed by the tens of thousands in tents and makeshift shelters.

"We decided to work inside the camp to offer the girls some psychological relief from the war", Ayub told AFP.

Behind him, some of the young athletes faced each other in the ring surrounded by cheering gymmates, while others trained on a punching bag.

"The girls have been affected by the war and the bombardments; some have lost their families or loved ones. They feel pain and want to release it, so they have found in boxing a way to express their emotions," said Ayub.

Ayub now runs these free training sessions for 45 boxers aged between 8 and 19 three times a week, with positive feedback from his students as well as from the community.

One of the youngsters, Ghazal Radwan, aged 14, hopes to become a champion and represent her country.

"I practice boxing to develop my character, release pent-up energy and to become a champion in the future, compete against world champions in other countries, and raise the Palestinian flag around the world", she told AFP.

- Call for aid -

One after the other, the girls trained with Ayub, shifting from right to left jabs, hooks and uppercuts at his command.

In war-devastated Gaza, where construction materials are scarce, Ayub had to improvise to build his small training facility.

"We brought wood and built a square boxing ring, but there are no mats or safety measures," he said.

He called on the international community to support the boxers and help them travel abroad to train, "to strengthen their confidence and offer them psychological support".

The strict blockade that Israel imposed on the Gaza Strip makes the reconstruction of sports facilities particularly complicated, as building materials are routinely rejected by Israeli officials.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported in January that a shipment of artificial turf donated by China to Gaza's youth and sports council was not allowed in by Israel.

With medicine, food and fuel all in short supply, sports equipment comes much lower on the list of items entering the Palestinian territory.

Rimas, a 16-year-old boxer, said she and her friends continued "to practice boxing despite the war, the bombardments and the destruction".

"We, the girls who box, hope for your support, that you will bring us gloves and shoes. We train on sand and need mats and punching bags," she said in comments addressed to the international community.


Is Iran Pushing Houthis Toward Military Action Against Washington?

Houthis continue mobilization, fundraising, and declare combat readiness (AP) 
Houthis continue mobilization, fundraising, and declare combat readiness (AP) 
TT

Is Iran Pushing Houthis Toward Military Action Against Washington?

Houthis continue mobilization, fundraising, and declare combat readiness (AP) 
Houthis continue mobilization, fundraising, and declare combat readiness (AP) 

As US military movements intensify in the Middle East and the possibility of strikes on Iran looms, Yemen’s Houthi group has continued military preparations, mobilizing fighters and establishing new weapons sites.

The Houthi mobilization comes at a time when the group is widely viewed as one of Iran’s most important regional arms for retaliation.

Although the Iran-backed group has not issued any official statement declaring its position on a potential US attack on Iran, its leaders have warned Washington against any military action and against bearing full responsibility for any escalation and its consequences.

They have hinted that any response would be handled in accordance with the group’s senior leadership's assessment, after evaluating developments and potential repercussions.

Despite these signals, some interpret the Houthis’ stance as an attempt to avoid drawing the attention of the current US administration, led by President Donald Trump, to the need for preemptive action in anticipation of a potential Houthi response.

The Trump administration previously launched a military campaign against the group in the spring of last year, inflicting heavy losses.

Islam al-Mansi, an Egyptian researcher specializing in Iranian affairs, said Iran may avoid burning all its cards unless absolutely necessary, particularly given US threats to raise the level of escalation should any Iranian military proxies intervene or take part in a confrontation.

Iran did not resort to using its military proxies during its confrontation with Israel or during a limited US strike last summer because it did not perceive an existential threat, al-Mansi said.

That calculation could change in the anticipated confrontation, potentially prompting Houthi intervention, including targeting US allies, interests, and military forces, he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Al-Mansi added that although Iran previously offered, within a negotiating framework, to abandon its regional proxies, including the Houthis, this makes it more likely that Tehran would use them in retaliation, noting that Iran created these groups to defend its territory from afar.

Many intelligence reports suggest that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has discussed with the Houthis the activation of alternative support arenas in a potential US-Iran confrontation, including the use of cells and weapons not previously deployed.

Visible readiness

In recent days, Chinese media outlets cited an unnamed Houthi military commander as saying the group had raised its alert level and carried out inspections of missile launch platforms in several areas across Yemen, including the strategically important Red Sea region.

In this context, Yemeni political researcher Salah Ali Salah said the Houthis would participate in defending Iran against any US attacks, citing the group’s media rhetoric accompanying mass rallies, which openly supports Iran’s right to defend itself.

While this rhetoric maintains some ambiguity regarding Iran, it repeatedly invokes the war in Gaza and renews Houthi pledges to resume military escalation in defense of the besieged enclave’s population, Salah told Asharq Al-Awsat.

He noted that Iran would not have shared advanced and sophisticated military technologies with the Houthis without a high degree of trust in their ability to use them in Iran’s interest.

In recent months, following Israeli strikes on the unrecognized Houthi government and several of its leaders, hardline Houthi figures demonstrating strong loyalty to Iran have become more prominent.

On the ground, the group has established new military sites and moved equipment and weapons to new locations along and near the coast, alongside the potential use of security cells beyond Yemen’s borders.

Salah said that if the threat of a military strike on Iran escalates, the Iranian response could take a more advanced form, potentially including efforts to close strategic waterways, placing the Bab al-Mandab Strait within the Houthis’ target range.

Many observers have expressed concern that the Houthis may have transferred fighters and intelligence cells outside Yemen over recent years to target US and Western interests in the region.

Open options

After a ceasefire was declared in Gaza, the Houthis lost one of their key justifications for mobilizing fighters and collecting funds. The group has since faced growing public anger over its practices and worsening humanitarian conditions, responding with media messaging aimed at convincing audiences that the battle is not over and that further rounds lie ahead.

Alongside weekly rallies in areas under their control in support of Gaza, the Houthis have carried out attacks on front lines with Yemen’s internationally recognized government, particularly in Taiz province.

Some military experts describe these incidents as probing attacks, while others see them as attempts to divert attention from other activities.

In this context, Walid al-Abara, head of the Yemen and Gulf Studies Center, said the Houthis entered a critical phase after the Gaza war ended, having lost one of the main justifications for their attacks on Red Sea shipping.

As a result, they may seek to manufacture new pretexts, including claims of sanctions imposed against them, to maintain media momentum and their regional role.

Al-Abara told Asharq Al-Awsat that the group has two other options. The first is redirecting its activity inward to strengthen its military and economic leverage, either to impose its conditions in any future settlement or to consolidate power.

The second is yielding to international and regional pressure and entering a negotiation track, particularly if sanctions intensify or its economic and military capacity declines.

According to an assessment by the Yemen and Gulf Studies Center, widespread protests in Iran are increasingly pressuring the regime’s ability to manage its regional influence at the same pace as before, without dismantling its network of proxies.

This reality is pushing Tehran toward a more cautious approach, governed by domestic priorities and cost-benefit calculations, while maintaining a minimum level of external influence without broad escalation.

Within this framework, al-Abara said Iran is likely to maintain a controlled continuity in its relationship with the Houthis through selective support that ensures the group remains effective.

However, an expansion of protests or a direct military strike on Iran could open the door to a deeper Houthi repositioning, including broader political and security concessions in exchange for regional guarantees.