Coronavirus burial pits so vast they’re visible from space. Iranian authorities began digging a pair of trenches for victims just days after the government disclosed the initial outbreak.
Two days after Iran declared its first cases of the novel coronavirus — in what would become one of the largest outbreaks of the illness outside of China — evidence of unusual activity appeared at a cemetery near where the infections emerged.
In Qom, the spiritual center of Iran’s ruling Shiite clerics, more than 846 people have contracted the virus, officials say. Iran’s government has not released an official death toll for Qom, however, where about 1.2 million people live. But videos, satellite images and other open-source data from the cemetery — a vast complex six miles north of the city center — suggest that the number of people struck down by the virus there is significantly higher than the official figure.
Qom is the spiritual center of Iran’s ruling Shiite Muslim clerics. With a population of about 1.2 million, the city is about 80 miles south of Tehran. Iran’s first two cases of coronavirus were in Qom. In satellite imagery from October, a large section of the cemetery appears unused. The imagery was provided to The Washington Post by Maxar Technologies, a Colorado-based space technology company.
Fabian Hinz of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, who reviewed the preceding video and the one that follows, said that unique geographical markers in the videos match landmarks found near the cemetery.
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