RAQA, Apr 24 (AFP): The stench is overwhelming, but Fawaz does not let it stop him. Stepping around the blue body bags, he searches for his brother's remains in the largest mass grave uncovered in Syria's Raqa.
The sacks are lined up on an otherwise bare football pitch neighbouring Raqa's national hospital, where jihadists from the Islamic State group made their last stand for their withering "caliphate."
US-backed forces ousted IS from the devastated city in October, leaving the Raqa Civil Council to run it.
Around a week ago, the RCC discovered dozens of bodies buried in the vast courtyard and have begun carefully retrieving them.
One worker pulls back a piece of sky-blue tarp. Fawaz Hamadeh puts his hand over his nose, and leans in over the decomposing body.
The thin 21-year-old is searching for any signs of his brother, fatally wounded in heavy bombardment during the battle's final days.
"My parents were able to leave, and he was supposed to flee too-but he couldn't find a car and it was too late," Hamadeh says.
He heard his brother was buried in the yard, but the body he is looking at is unfamiliar.
"I'm feeling so much pain because I can't find my brother's body or that of his wife," says Hamadeh.
He looks around at the rows of dead, the rusting carcasses of cars, the crumbling multi-storey buildings.
"It's indescribable, the size of this disaster we're living," he says.
