Hundreds of human skulls and bones found in cave under Mor Dimet church in Syriac village of Arbo, Tur Abdin

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ARBO, TUR ABDIN, Turkey – Hundreds of human skulls and bones have been uncovered in a hidden cave beneath the Mor Dimet Church in the Syriac village of Arbo, Tur Abdin, ANF News reports. The cave is reached through a narrow and dark passage.

The remains are believed to belong mostly to women and children, and are thought to be of victims of mass killings during the Sayfo Genocide of 1915. According to ANF News, villagers of Arbo say they have known about the cave for years but have not spoken out for fear of repercussions from Turkish authorities. An official investigation has not been carried out to date.

The village of Arbo is part of the Nsibin (Nusaybin) district. There are not many Syriacs left in the village -although some have returned lately- after its evacuation was ordered by Turkish authorities in the 1990s, during the heated armed conflict between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish state.

The period 1894-1915 saw what Israeli scholars Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi call the “Thirty Year Genocide.” The culmination of this genocide took place in 1915, during World War I. In that year, in what is now southeastern Turkey, the Ottoman army and Kurdish tribes allied with them, brutally murdered millions of Syriacs (Arameans-Assyrians-Chaldeans) and Armenians, expelled them en masse, and took them and forcibly converted them to Islam.