Suriye

Children skip past a mass grave of victims of the massacre in Taftanaz.

Shellshocked, Kili, Idlib province.

Sewing machine in a home destroyed by the regime, Kili.

Ahmed Ghonim, 87, stands in the burnt home where his son, Mustafa was killed, Taftanaz.

Members of the Gazal family grieve at their home.

Friday protest against Assad.

Lonesome destruction, Idlib.

Mourner.

Friends and neighbors look over the body of Jamil Setoot, killed by the Syrian army, Taftanaz.

His mother cries.

Cups and saucers.

Everything burned. Taftanaz.

Livestock, shot down in the assault.

Destroyed school.

Living room.

"Only Assad can control Syria."

Shells of cars.

Mass grave, Taftanaz. 82 people were killed in the town by the Assad regime on April 3rd and 4th, 2012.

Anti-regime activists watching, waiting.

Destroyed minaret.

In the early spring of 2012 Syria was in revolt. Before Al Qaeda arrived, before ISIS and it's caliphate, before Russian and US intervention, the countryside rose up against the brutal dicatorship of Bashar al-Assad. The regime answered in kind, and destroyed Taftanaz, a village in northern Idlib province. In early April, units of the Syrian Army staged a violent raid on the town. Working from lists of suspected enemies of the regime, they burned over half of the homes and summarily executed many of the residents who had not fled. 82 people died in the attack on Taftanaz, in what was then the largest massacre in Idlib province, one of many that devastated the farming towns of northern Syria. The human rights violations committed by the Assad regime there helped galvanize the countryside of Idlib, and set the stage for the next phase of the conflict.