Syria's missing persons commission announced on Saturday that several children who were detained alongside their parents by the former Assad regime early in the country's war were most likely dead.
In a statement, the National Commission for Missing Persons said that it had "reached reliable and corroborated findings that allow, with a high degree of professional certainty, the conclusion that the children of Dr Rania Al-Abbasi are dead."
Dr Rania Al-Abbasi, a dentist, was arrested along with her six children, aged between two and 14, in a raid on her home in the Damascus suburb of Mashroua Dummer on 3 September 2013 by the Assad regime's military intelligence.
Her husband, Abdul Rahman Yasin, was arrested in an earlier raid by military intelligence. They were believed to be detained because they gave assistance to Syrian opposition activists.
The commission said that its findings "are based on a set of investigations, data, and cross-analytical assessments that have been reviewed and evaluated in line with established professional standards."
It added that it was still looking to recover the remains and uncover the location of where the family is buried.
On the social media platform X, Syrian analyst Suhail al-Ghazi said that this was "one of the most known and devastating" stories of missing children in Syria.
In a post on Facebook, Hassan al-Abbasi, the brother of Rania, said that Amjad Youssef, the perpetrator of the massacre in the Damascus suburb of Tadmour in 2013, is linked to the case.
Youssef was arrested by Syrian authorities in April.
Kholoud Helmi, General Coordinator at Families for Freedom, an organisation set up to demand the release of detainees held by the regime, told The New Arab that the family "became a symbol of the cruelty of enforced disappearance under the Assad regime."
"The disappearance of an entire family, including young children, represented one of the most painful examples of the violations committed against Syrians over the past decades," she said.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), a rights group and monitor that tracked human rights violations over the course of the war, documented the forced disappearance of 3,736 children by the Assad regime over the course of the war .
SNHR documented 160,123 people in total have been forcibly disappeared by the regime.
Helmi said that Families for Freedom welcomed the efforts of the commission to provide families with answers to the fate of the missing, but that these must be guided by respect for families' rights and wishes .
"For Syrian families, this is not only about the past. It is about recognition, accountability, and the possibility of healing. Families cannot move forward while they are denied the truth."
"The search for the missing must remain a national priority, and families must remain at the centre of that process."