Newsroom
Nine years ago on Monday, August 3rd, 2017, three archaeologists began digging near the old Athalassa psychiatric hospital to find out whether a story told by nurses for decades was true.
It was.
Beneath the ground, they found human bones, hospital blankets, and evidence of a hurried burial carried out amid the chaos of the Turkish invasion.
The excavation did not happen this week, but the story has returned to the spotlight following a new Cyprus News Agency interview with archaeologist Michalis Iakovidis, published on the anniversary of the first test dig on Aug. 3, 2017.
What his team uncovered brought attention back to 33 people whose deaths had remained on the margins of Cyprus’ collective memory for decades.
On July 20, 1974, Turkish aircraft bombed Athalassa Hospital in Nicosia, killing 31 psychiatric patients and two nurses. Three of the patients were Turkish Cypriots.
A nearby National Guard storage camp is believed to have been the intended target. But the bombs struck two hospital wards close to the military site, destroying one and leaving patients injured in the other.
The bombing continued for several hours that morning.
When it finally stopped, hospital workers faced a scene no one had prepared them for. Cyprus was under attack, the summer heat was intense, and there was no organized way to deal with so many bodies.
Some of the victims were wrapped in hospital sheets and thick brown blankets before being placed in a crater created by one of the bombs.
Nurses recorded the names of the dead and remembered where some had been buried. Their accounts would become crucial decades later.
In 1993, nurse Takis Agathokleous returned to the area with former colleagues. They planted cypress trees in a circle, quietly marking the ground where they believed the bodies lay.
But another 24 years passed before anyone began digging.
The first test excavation on Aug. 3, 2017, found bones and pieces of blankets matching the nurses’ descriptions. That discovery led to a full excavation beginning in November.
The work was slow and dangerous. The site contained asbestos and rubble from the destroyed hospital, forcing crews to keep the ground wet so they would not breathe in contaminated dust.
By the time the excavation ended, archaeologists had recovered remains belonging to at least 10 people.
They also found small, deeply personal traces of the people who had died there: eyeglasses, medicine vials, and hospital bedding.
One victim appeared to have been holding a vial of medicine when the bombing occurred. A female patient’s red nylon dress remained remarkably intact after 43 years underground.
The soil still carried signs of the intense heat and burning caused by the explosion.
Seven of the victims recovered from the site were eventually identified, six Greek Cypriots and one Turkish Cypriot.
But the excavation did not solve the entire mystery.
Records examined by the team suggested that other Athalassa patients had been buried in different parts of Nicosia’s Greek Cemetery. Some graves carried only broad descriptions such as “fallen during the invasion,” while others may never have been properly marked.
Finding them now would be extremely difficult.
The long delay also exposed an uncomfortable part of the story. These victims were psychiatric patients at a time when mental illness carried an enormous social stigma.
Many had already been removed from everyday community life. After they were killed, their cases did not receive the same public attention as those of many other victims of 1974.
One of them was Giannakis Charalambous from Katydata.
Giannakis became ill at age 3, and medication he received reportedly affected his speech and development. After his father died, his mother worked to support the family while his grandparents helped raise him.
His mother and sisters later moved to Australia, but Giannakis could not join them because immigration rules at the time excluded people with his condition.
When his grandparents became too old and unwell to care for him, he was admitted to Athalassa Hospital in 1972. He was killed in the bombing two years later.
His remains were eventually identified, and his family buried him in July 2023, 49 years after his death.
A monument carrying the names of all 33 victims now stands near the former hospital wards, close to the Nicosia General Hospital mortuary.
The excavation may have begun nine years ago, but the search for the full truth is not over. Some victims have still not been located or identified.
For their families, this was never simply an archaeological investigation. It was a long-delayed effort to bring home people who had been forgotten twice, first in life because of their illness and then in death because of where they had been confined.
