Syria¡¯s government has ordered soldiers to guard a mass grave created to conceal atrocities under Bashar Assad and has opened a criminal investigation, following a report that revealed a yearslong conspiracy by the fallen dictatorship to hide thousands of bodies on the remote desert site.

The site, in the Dhumair desert east of Damascus, was used during Assad¡¯s rule as a military weapons depot, according to a former Syrian army officer with knowledge of the operation. It was later emptied of personnel in 2018 to ensure secrecy for a plot that involved unearthing the bodies ?of thousands of victims of the dictatorship buried in a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus and trucking them an hour¡¯s drive away to Dhumair.

The plot, orchestrated by the ?dictator¡¯s inner ?circle, was called ¡°Operation Move Earth.¡±