Archaeologist recalls ‘bodies wrapped in blankets and sheets’ after exhuming bones of Athalassa Hospital bombing victims

Local 1974Hospitalmissing personsTop News Archaeologist recalls ‘bodies wrapped in blankets and sheets’ after exhuming bones of Athalassa Hospital bombing victims Image 25 1536x1027 Relevant News Limassol mayor: “We want funding, not privileges” 3 August 2026 State grant to municipalities to rise by €39m as stoppage goes ahead 3 August 2026 Property valuers group says online estimates can’t replace a surveyor 3 August 2026 newsroom 3 August 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber Archaeologist Michalis Iakovides, who led the exhumations at Athalassa Hospital that began in November 2017, has given an account of what he and his team found while searching for the remains of patients killed when Turkish aircraft bombed two wards of the hospital on July 20, 1974. “We found some of them with glasses embedded in their bodies. One was holding a medicine ampoule in his folded hand, marked Serenace. We found up to 30 such ampoules. We found them exactly as witnesses had described: the bodies wrapped in blankets and sheets. One patient’s dress, red in colour, hadn’t deteriorated at all because it was made of nylon,” Iakovides told the Cyprus News Agency (CNA). The bombing killed 33 people aged 22 to 80. Thirty-one were patients, three of them Turkish Cypriot, and two were nurses. The bodies of two of the dead were handed over to their families at the time and buried in their home towns. A military camp near Athalassa Hospital, used as a storage depot, is thought to have been the Turkish military’s actual target, which is why the casualties occurred in Wards 1 and 2, the wards closest to the army’s storage facilities. Iakovides told CNA the exhumations followed years of effort by the late Xenophon Kallis, who pushed harder than anyone for excavations to locate the remains of missing persons in both the free and occupied areas, with the backing of the then Presidential Commissioner Fotis Fotiou. “He [Xenophon Kallis] had placed the Athalassa Hospital exhumations high among his priorities,” Iakovides recalled, going on to describe the process that was followed. Hours of bombing, a crater and hasty burials The bombing was continuous from 9am until 1:30pm on July 20, 1974. When it stopped, nurses on shift realised Ward 1 had been completely destroyed and Ward 2 held casualties. “The bomb that hit Ward 1 was 500 pounds. It left behind a crater half the size of the ward, and we later excavated it,” Iakovides said, leafing through the excavation team’s diary from the dig. The bomb left 31 patients and two nurses dead. The immediate casualties numbered around 10 to 11 people, who were buried in a makeshift pit behind what is now the mortuary at Nicosia General Hospital. “The crater was created by the bomb. When we did the exhumation, we found the burning. It smelled of sulphur,” he continued. Nurses kept records at the time and recorded 33 people as casualties. “They wrapped the dead in blankets, those brown ones that don’t degrade. They moved them to other wards, other beds, and then wrapped them in sheets. The bodies began to smell because of the high temperatures, and they had to be buried. You have to understand that in a crisis, there were no protocols. It was summer, and they had to be buried. They were burned. The smell was unbelievable,” he added, recalling also the nurses’ testimonies that made the excavation possible. They were buried in the crater, and based on later findings, some were dismembered, with bones found scattered and varied within the crater. Testimonies and cypress trees planted in a circle The process that eventually led to the 2017 exhumations began years earlier. In May 1993, Takis Agathokleous, a nurse at the time of the bombing, went to the site with colleagues and planted eleven cypress trees, likely marking the number of dead believed buried in the crater. “It was a marker to circle the area. When we dug, we found ten people, perhaps eleven counting the skulls located. The minimum number of people identified in the crater came to 10, though the final number will only be confirmed once the anthropological examinations, which are still pending, are complete. “Agathokleous had given testimony back in 1981 to Xenophon Kallis, who pursued the matter. When he became an adviser to the Presidential Commissioner, he made the Noratlas case and the Psychiatric Hospital a priority, along with other cases,” Iakovides told CNA. An initial test trench was dug on August 3, 2017. “Together with three archaeologists, we made a test trench to see whether the testimonies were accurate. And there we found the blankets and bones,” he said. Following the test trench, approval and funding were granted for the excavation, which began on November 1, 2017. “The cypress trees had to be cut down. We called the Forestry Department, and they cut down nine of the eleven. A private company was also brought in for consultancy and logistical support because asbestos was present. They told us the protocol. We watered the ground with tankers so we wouldn’t inhale asbestos. We collected a total of 100 cubic metres of asbestos and building materials, which were sent for biological disposal. The manual recovery of the skeletal remains was completed on November 16, and we found bones belonging to 10 people,” Iakovides recounted. The final number, as noted above, will be confirmed once the anthropological examinations are complete. What happened to the other victims Xenophon Kallis remained troubled after the exhumation because one of the witnesses had given a list of 31 dead. The archaeologists searched the Press and Information Office, CyBC and the Archbishopric for testimonial material and records. “I was sent to the Greek Cemetery. I spoke with Andreas Karayiannis, who was in charge of the cemetery at the time. A cooperative man, he opened his records to us, and we searched and found that 20 people appear to have been buried there with the listed origin ‘asylum.’ Pambos Alkiviades was also there that day. He had been a gravedigger from 1965 to 2000. He showed me the area opposite the monument erected for those who fell in the coup, telling me that burned individuals from the asylum were buried there,” Iakovides told CNA. The gravestones read “fallen of the invasion.” Based on the Greek Cemetery’s archival material, funeral contractor Andreas Kekkouris showed the archaeologist areas that may have held people from the asylum. “Of these, six died between July 23-25, 1974, and the others by October. They were probably wounded and died later. So for 10-11 of them, death was instantaneous. The casualty list covered far more people,” he explained. The days of the 2017 exhumations For any archaeologist, the day bones are located is undoubtedly an awe-inspiring moment. The Athalassa Hospital case is perhaps one of the forgotten human stories among Cyprus’s missing. These people burned in the bombing, and no one searched for them, because the stigma surrounding psychiatric care was severe at the time. Asked what stayed with him most from the exhumations, Iakovides described the moment with emotion. “At 2.5 metres into the crater, we found the fallen exactly as described. Inside the blankets and sheets. We found glasses embedded in them, building materials, and glass ampoules of medicine marked Serenace. We found maybe 30 ampoules, and one man was holding his in his folded hand.” “One woman was wearing a red dress that had survived in perfect condition; it hadn’t decomposed because it was nylon. We dug to a depth of 4 metres and found pieces of the bomb. Even though the exhumation took place 43 years later, the soil smelled of sulphur, and there was a black layer of burning inside the crater.” Based on testimonies from the Greek Cemetery, four to five people are believed to be buried in Plot 102, located south of the Commandos’ Monument, where six graves are marked “fallen of the invasion.” The others appear to be buried in different parts of the cemetery. The Greek Cemetery is divided into numbered plots, each containing roughly 100 to 120 graves. “As a result, locating unmarked graves becomes extremely difficult,” Iakovides said. Extending the search to the Psychiatric Hospital After the Psychiatric Hospital excavation was completed, the witnesses, Takis Agathokleous, Giorgos Tsolakis and Kypros Demosthenous, returned and insisted there might be another grave behind Ward 1. “We extended the excavation and dug there, and indeed found a crater where the nursing staff’s offices had been. That was the central ward in the middle, with the toilets at the back. Kypros Demosthenous told us there was a septic pit behind the bathrooms. We dug it, but found no grave. We also dug elsewhere in Ward 2. We covered a large area, but unfortunately found nothing,” Iakovides told CNA. It’s worth noting that when the mortuary of the new Nicosia General Hospital was due to be built, Xenophon Kallis was informed, and he in turn raised the issue of the cypress trees and the mass grave, leading to changes in the construction plans. “In more recent years, when the PASYDY kindergarten was due to be built and earth-filling began, Kallis again said an excavation had to take place before construction. Whatever needed doing, Kallis did. It was also his idea to check the records at the Press and Information Office, CyBC and the Archbishopric, and to carry out research at the Greek Cemetery,” he said. In the end, the bones of ten people were located at the site, and seven were identified: six Greek Cypriots and one Turkish Cypriot. Testimony from another nurse on duty CNA also secured testimony from another nurse, Tasos Christodoulou, who was on duty on July 20. “It was 6am, Saturday, July 20. Leaving the ward and heading to my car, I looked towards Mia Milia after hearing the drone of Turkish air force transport planes dropping paratroopers there. By the time we realised what was happening, it was around 8am, and the bombers began striking the Psychiatric Hospital, covering the area where the National Guard camp was located. Reports said there were fuel tanks there that they wanted to bomb. “A colleague and I tried to move from one ward to another. I remember we hid under a small bridge. We stayed there until 11am,” Christodoulou recalled. He described what followed as the search for dead and living patients began once the situation calmed. “One ward full of patients was blown apart, leaving a deep crater. We began gathering the dead patients, who numbered around 20. They were taken by truck to the mortuary of the old Nicosia Hospital. We gathered the remaining injured patients in one ward and, together with doctors from Nicosia Hospital, began treating them, stitching wounds where we could. This went on until 5pm. “It was a general devastation. Several patients even ran outside to save themselves when the wards were bombed. Those images never leave your mind,” he said with deep emotion and pain. The case of young Giannakis The story of the Athalassa Hospital bombing also includes three-year-old Giannakis Charalambous from Katydata. Giannakis had fallen ill as a young child, and the wrong medication he received caused him to lose his speech and affected his mental development. He never attended school and lived at home with his grandparents while his mother worked to raise her three orphaned children. His identified remains were buried in July 2023. According to Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs Anna Aristotelous, who spoke at the time, Giannakis’s primary caregivers were his grandmother, Evridiki, and his grandfather, Giannis, who had also taken on the role of father to the three orphaned children. In the late 1960s, his mother and two sisters decided to emigrate to Australia, but Giannakis was left behind, as migration of people with his condition was barred there. When his grandparents developed health problems, and in the absence of state welfare support and due to prejudice, Giannakis was transferred to Athalassa Hospital in 1972. On July 20, 1974, the final chapter of his life was written. He died tragically during the Turkish air force’s bombing of the hospital. A monument bearing the names of all those who died was erected in February 2023 at the site of the former hospital wards and other facilities, near the mortuary at Nicosia General Hospital. Fotis Fotiou, the Presidential Commissioner under whose tenure the exhumations began, apologised “for the treatment the cases of the Athalassa Hospital patients received, as well as the burial sites in the wider area.” He said the answers owed to the families “could and should have been given many years ago, which unfortunately did not happen.” (Information from CNA) Subscribe to our Newsletter Latest News Limassol mayor: “We want funding, not privileges” State grant to municipalities to rise by €39m as stoppage goes ahead Property valuers group says online estimates can’t replace a surveyor ALMA says WHO report is chance to fix GHS flaws Deputy mayor accuses Polis municipality of negligence over fires Rescuers search for 28 missing after ferry catches fire in Indonesia’s Madura island Leaked exams, dashed dreams: Why India’s ‘cockroach’ youth turned on Modi Follow en.philenews on Google News and be the first to know all the news about Cyprus and the world.