Syrians are starting to uncover mass graves across the country, shedding light on the magnitude of atrocities committed during the brutal rule of ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad.

More than two weeks after Assad fled Syria and his regime collapsed, scores of Syrian families still have no answer about what happened to their loved ones following their detention by Assad’s secret police.

Hundreds of thousands of bodies of people “tortured to death by the Assad regime” could be buried in a mass grave east of Damascus, according to Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the US-based Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), an anti-Assad advocacy group.

The alleged mass grave site in the city of Qutayfah, about 45 kilometers (28 miles) from Damascus, is marked by trenches 6-7 meters (19-23 feet) deep, 3-4 meters wide, and 50-150 meters long, according to SETF.

“The bulldozer excavator driver described how intelligence officers forced workers to use the bulldozer to flatten and compress the bodies to make them fit and easier to bury before digging the next line/trench,” Moustafa said.

On Monday, reports emerged of more than 20 bodies found in a mass grave north of Izraa in Daraa governorate, southern Syria.

Videos from the Agence France-Presse news agency show men digging and pulling bones from the dirt. Another shows two rows of covered bodies lying on the ground and a bulldozer gently trying to dig the top layer of the soil.

Bodies identified by numbers

In 2020, a man known as “the Gravedigger” told a German court he was recruited by the Assad regime to bury hundreds of bodies in mass graves, according to the ICMP.

The bodies were those of Syrians from various detention centers, the witness told a trial of former Syrian intelligence officers. The man said that, along with others, he would escort multiple trucks, “loaded with anywhere between 300-700 corpses to mass graves in Qatayfah north of Damascus and al-Najha to the south four times a week. The bodies could only be identified by the numbers etched on their chests or foreheads and exhibited severe signs of torture and mutilation,” according to ICMP.

SETF’s Moustafa said he is aware of at least eight mass grave sites in Syria. He also urged international experts to come to the country to help with the process of exhuming and identifying bodies.

Jenifer Fenton, the spokesperson for the United Nations’ special envoy to Syria, said last week that related documentation to detention site and mass graves “must be secured to aid families in their search for justice and accountability.”

“We must prioritize accounting for the missing, ensuring the families receive the clarity and recognition they desperately need,” she said in a press briefing.

One of those family members is Hazem Dakel from Idlib, who now lives in Sweden.

Dakel said his uncle Najeeb was arrested in 2012 and it was later confirmed by the family as having been killed. His brother Amer was detained the following year, he said. Former detainees at the notorious Saydnaya prison near Damascus said Amer had disappeared in mid-April 2015 after being tortured there. But the regime never acknowledged his death.

The family is now “certain” Amer died under torture in Saydnaya, Dakel posted on Facebook.

Amid the celebrations of Assad’s fall there’s also been great sadness among families of those who went missing.

“They are mourning their children,” Dakel said. “Yes, the regime fell after resistance and struggle, but there was sorrow – like, where are our children?”

The world’s oceans are under threat from rising sea temperatures, marine pollution and overfishing.

The effects are visible in shallow ecosystems suffering from coral bleaching, but less is known about the impact on deeper areas of the ocean such as the mesophotic or “twilight” zone, which lies between 30 and 150 meters (100 and 490 feet) below the surface.

This is the area that Ghislain Bardout and Emmanuelle Périé-Bardout, a husband-and-wife team of ocean explorers from France, are focused on. They founded Under the Pole, an organization that carries out diving expeditions to gather scientific knowledge on these extreme, uncharted environments, as part of the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative.

They have witnessed firsthand the impact of bottom trawling, a fishing method that involves dragging nets along the seabed to catch species that live close to the seafloor, such as cod, hake and shrimp. Around a quarter of all wild-caught seafood is caught via this method each year.

As the heavy nets scrape along the seafloor, they can collect unwanted bycatch and harm reefs and seagrasses, leading to the destruction of precious ecosystems. Despite this, the practice is permitted widely across the world, including in some marine protected areas (MPAs), such as in the French Mediterranean.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Emmanuelle Périé-Bardout: Bottom trawling is (a method of) fishing that you could compare to a bulldozer in a forest. If you imagine a forest which is being clear cut by a bulldozer, you can picture the danger for the biodiversity and the life inside the forest, and the same (happens) in the water with bottom trawling. But the problem of the ocean in general is that we don’t see it. You have bottom trawling everywhere, every day, and it’s a massive damage to biodiversity, but we just don’t see it.

Ghislain Bardout: It can take hundreds of years to recover the ecosystem. It depends on the species, but most of them have very slow growth. For example, black corals, which are like underwater trees and can grow up to a meter and a half high, can be 200, 300, 400, 500, 600 years old. They can be destroyed in just a few seconds by a trawler. When they are destroyed, you lose the entire ecosystem very quickly – all the fish, all the shells, all the different species that create this ecosystem.

Emmanuelle: The first time we dived to the marine animal forest we found in Fourni we saw the tracks of the bottom trawler just close to the forest.

Ghislain: This rich ecosystem is on some rocks with sand plains all around it. When trawling, the fishermen try to be as close as possible to this rich ecosystem, but they try not to go on it, because the rocks could damage the nets. But indirectly, fishing so close to those rich ecosystems is very damaging, because it’s not only physical destruction, it’s generating mud clouds that then fall on the ecosystem, and little by little, it destroys life. This is where the question of science is essential. It’s not only the fact that there are regulations banning trawling, but you also need to know where to do it, and this needs exploration, science and knowledge.

Ghislain: With regulations, if you don’t know what to protect and where to protect it, they have no value. You have to know where to apply those regulations. You need to have knowledge of those ecosystems: where are they, what species are living in this ecosystem, what are the conditions of those ecosystems, what are the threats to those ecosystems? If you have a good understanding of that, you can adapt the conservation issues to it. For instance, some species are very fragile and are highly threatened and need a very strong and total conservation, whereas other locations could be partially fished some of the year, but not during the spawning or reproduction period.

Emmanuelle: Without science-based information, you cannot change the regulation and the conservation policies. So it’s a tool, I would say. But also, we cannot wait to have all the science information to act and ask for better protected areas, because it can take years – and we don’t have years.

Emmanuelle: This year, Greece was the first European country to say that they will ban bottom trawling in their protected areas by 2030. It’s kind of a joke, to say “we will protect a marine protected area,” but it’s better than nothing. It was a first step, and England followed, saying they will ban bottom trawling in most of their marine protected areas. So it’s going in a good direction, but we are waiting for the United Nations Ocean Conference, which will take place in Nice, France, next June. I hope that more countries, including France, will move forward to ban bottom trawling in MPAs. I think we should quickly transition to a fishing technique that is more selective – and it exists, it’s small fishermen.

Ghislain: Local, selective, low-scale fishing with many small boats makes sense, and it also distributes the resource and the economy much better. Whereas industrial fishing is very concentrated on a few companies which are making a lot of profit based on the global resources of the oceans.

Ghislain: There is global warming, plastic pollution. The impact of global warming in the ocean can be huge, especially in shallow waters. As you may know, this year was a huge bleaching year. But where we worked in French Polynesia (in the South Pacific), our studies revealed that at a depth below 30 or 40 meters (98 or 131 feet) in the mesophotic zone, there was just a little bit of bleaching. The same occurs in the Mediterranean Sea with the gorgonias (sea fan corals): they have been destroyed in shallow waters by heatwaves in the last few years, whereas in the mesophotic, in Greece, or in France, they are sheltered.

That might change in the future, due to global warming, but for now they are protected, and that’s a huge hope. That should encourage us to act now, as the mesophotic could have a role as a refuge and be a regenerative ecosystem.

Emmanuelle: We are often asked about solutions and technology. I think it’s interesting to work on solutions. But if you have a fire in the forest, you won’t put seeds in until you’ve put the fire out. That’s what marine protected areas are for – they give us the time we need to stop the fire.

Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex have shared a rare photo of their children on their Christmas card this year.

Released on Monday, the card features a collage of images taken throughout the year.

In one casual family photo, Harry and Meghan crouch down with their arms outstretched while Prince Archie, 5, and Princess Lilibet, 3, run towards them, their faces hidden from the camera.

Five other images appear on the card, all depicting engagements from the year.

“On behalf of the office of Prince Harry & Meghan, the Duke & Duchess of Sussex, Archewell Productions and Archewell Foundation, we wish you a very Happy Holiday Season and a joyful New Year,” the card reads.

This year marks the first time since 2021 that Harry and Meghan have released a Christmas card featuring their children, whose privacy they fiercely guard.

The seasonal greeting is for professional use and the couple will send a separate card to their close family and friends that won’t be shared publicly, the UK’s PA Media news agency reported.

Other members of the royal family have released their Christmas cards too.

King Charles and Queen Camilla selected a relatively informal photo for their card this year, choosing one snapped in April in the garden at Buckingham Palace.

Meanwhile, Princess Anne chose a photo of her and her husband Vice-Adm. Tim Laurence waving from a carriage during a ceremonial procession in June.

Hamas has become the latest party to the Gaza hostage and ceasefire negotiations to voice optimism about the prospects of reaching a deal, amid a flurry of diplomatic activity in the region.

In an official statement on Tuesday, Hamas said reaching an agreement was “possible.” A Hamas source also added that the talks were “positive and optimistic.”

Top US, Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian officials have all touted progress in the negotiations in recent days. While officials caution that a deal is neither sealed nor guaranteed, the upbeat language and recent diplomatic activity point to significant momentum toward reaching a deal.

Hamas also cautioned that hurdles remain, suggesting that Israel was “imposing new conditions” in the negotiations.

“The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas affirms that in light of the serious and positive discussions taking place in Doha today, under the auspices of our Qatari and Egyptian brothers, reaching an agreement for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange is possible if the occupation stops imposing new conditions,” the organization said in a statement.

The terms of the deal are broadly the same as the proposal put forth by US President Joe Biden earlier this year, according to a diplomatic source familiar with the matter.

The three-phase Biden proposal in late May paired a release of hostages held in Gaza with a “full and complete ceasefire.” The first phase would last six weeks and include the “withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas of Gaza” and the “release of a number of hostages, including women, the elderly, the wounded in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners,” the US president had said.

“What has changed is that Israeli forces are likely to stay in Gaza temporarily,” when phase one of a deal starts, the diplomatic source said, namely in the strip of land on the Gaza-Egypt border, called the Philadelphi corridor, and in an area bisecting the strip, known as the Netzarim corridor.

Israel’s demand that its troops remain along the Philadelphi corridor – and Hamas’ insistence that they withdraw – was a key reason for the collapse of talks in August.

The optimistic language follows a slew of regional diplomatic activity, including a visit by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to Israel, Egypt and Qatar last week.

“My goal will be to put us in a position to be able to close this deal this month,” Sullivan said last week, speaking after his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Brett McGurk, a top Middle East adviser to President Biden, remained in Doha with other US officials working toward a ceasefire in Gaza as US officials believe that a deal is closer than it has been.

McGurk had been traveling in the region with Sullivan and the fact that he stayed is a sign the administration feels positive momentum, but a deal is not expected imminently.

US and Israeli officials have said conditions have ripened for an agreement to be reached in the wake of the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, which has further isolated Hamas in its battle against Israel.

Officials also point to the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and other Israeli military achievements as giving the Israeli government the victories it has sought to achieve before reaching a ceasefire deal.

Since the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the death toll from Israeli military action in Gaza has risen to almost 45,000, with more than 106,000 people injured, according to the health ministry in the territory.

US President-elect Donald Trump has also impacted talks, nudging Netanyahu toward a deal and threatening that there would be “all hell to pay” if the hostages were not released by the time he took office. His incoming team has also coordinated closely with the Biden administration and made trips to the region to help secure a deal.

The longtime Israeli hostage negotiator Gershon Baskin cautioned that “there is no deal until there is a deal.”

“Hamas has been ready since September for a comprehensive deal to end the war, return all the hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and even agreed to give up control in Gaza,” said Baskin, who is not directly involved in the talks but remains a keen analyst. “What is brewing now, perhaps, is a major Egyptian-Qatari effort to reach a deal in stages.”

“Public anger against Hamas is erupting throughout Gaza,” he said. “At the same time, Hamas will not agree to release all the hostages if the IDF remains in Gaza, and even if there is a temporary ceasefire, it will not last if Israel intends to prevent the free movement of a million Gazans who want to return to their homes that no longer exist.”

The Israeli prime minister has also vowed that he will not end the war until Hamas is completely defeated in Gaza, raising the prospect of the war resuming once a number of hostages are released in the first phase of the agreement.

Denmark released anti-whaling activist Paul Watson from detention on Tuesday and said it had rejected a Japanese request to extradite him over criminal charges dating back more than a decade.

US-Canadian Watson, 74, founder of the Sea Shepherd conservationist group and the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, was released in Greenland’s capital Nuuk, police in the autonomous Danish territory said.

Watson was apprehended when his ship docked in Greenland in July.

“I’m certainly relieved, especially since it allows me to get home to my children before Christmas,” Paul Watson told Reuters after his release on Tuesday.

“I haven’t seen my children since June. But the support here in Greenland has been incredible,” he said, adding that he had received more than 4,000 letters of support, including around a dozen from supporters in Japan.

Denmark’s justice ministry said it had based its decision on an overall assessment, including the age of the case and in particular an uncertainty over whether time spent in Greenland detention could be deducted from any final sentence in Japan.

“Based on correspondence with the Japanese authorities on this matter, the Ministry of Justice believes that it cannot be assumed with the necessary certainty that this will be the case,” Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard said in a statement.

Japan had issued an international warrant for Watson’s arrest, seeking him on charges of breaking into a Japanese vessel in the Antarctic Ocean in 2010, obstructing its business and causing injury as well as property damage.

A spokesperson for Japan’s embassy in Copenhagen declined to comment. Japan’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Watson’s lawyer Julie Stage said she was satisfied with the decision.

“We think it has taken a long time, but the most important thing is that it ends with the right decision,” she said.

Watson has had strong support in France, where he has lived with his family since 2023, with a campaign for his release enlisting the support of French President Emmanuel Macron and actress Brigitte Bardot.

Lamya Essemlali, the head of Sea Shepherd France, who has visited Watson in detention in Greenland, said the news had taken her by surprise.

“When I got the news, I mean, I could hardly think, honestly. I just rushed into my clothes and rushed to the prison. I think I still don’t realize really that he’s out,” she said.