Syria denied any responsibility for the mass graves discovered Saturday next to Syria's former military intelligence headquarters in East Lebanon's Bekaa valley, throwing the blame on Palestinian militant Abu Nidal, an Nahar reported on Sunday.
A statement appeared late Saturday night on a "Syrian news" website quoting an informed Syrian source as saying the victims were part of four hundred Lebanese and Palestinians whom Abu Nidal's Fatah-Revolutionary Council had executed in the Bekaa during the years of the civil war between 1986 and 1991.
Abu Nidal was then engaged in a war with Fatah mainstream faction. The Syrian statement noted that certain anti-Syria groups in Lebanon were too quick to blame Damascus for all atrocities in Lebanon.
Most of the victims of the Arafat-Abu Nidal war within the Lebanese civil war were buried in various sites in the Bekaa, where the new mass graves were discovered, according to the Syrian news statement.
Lebanese troops operating with bulldozers since Friday have exhumed the remains of 26 human skeletons with traces of underwear clothes still sticking to the bones from two mass graves - one containing 20 bodies and another six remains.
