Syria’s commission for missing persons said on Saturday that the children of dentist Rania al-Abbasi, who disappeared with their parents more than a decade ago under former Bashar al Assad regime, were likely dead.
The fate of the children, unknown for years, became a symbol for the plight of other missing children of detainees and those forcibly disappeared during Assad’s rule, which ended with his ouster in 2024.
Abbasi, who was also a Syrian chess champion, went missing along with her husband and their six children, aged 3 to 15, in March 2013 after government forces raided their home in Damascus, according to rights groups.
“We have reached reliable and corroborating results that allow us to conclude with a high degree of professional certainty that Dr. Rania al-Abbasi’s children are deceased,” the National Commission for Missing Persons in Syria said in a statement.
The commission, set up by the country’s new Islamist authorities in May 2025 to investigate missing and forcibly disappeared people, said its findings were “based on multiple verification and analysis procedures” conducted in coordination with national authorities.
“Efforts to find the remains… are still ongoing,” it added.
“We finally saw them… but they were martyred”
Hassan al-Abbasi, Rania’s brother, confirmed the children’s deaths in a video posted on Facebook.
