New research conducted by the U.K.-based Forensic Architecture Institute has revealed that four possible sites of mass graves in the area of the village of Tantura, where Zionist militias committed a massacre in 1948.

According to the new research, as reported in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, two mass graves have been identified in a parking lot on the beach, one of which contains 70 to 140 bodies, while the other holds between 40 to 80. A third grave is located in the vicinity of the main Islamic cemetery in the village, while a fourth is located on the beach.

The massacres were committed against the residents of the Palestinian village on May 23, 1948, after soldiers from the Alexandroni Brigade of the Haganah, a Zionist paramilitary group, which seized the village where 1,500 Palestinians lived.

A visual printed in Haaretz depicting one of the sites of a potential mass grave. 

The new research was conducted by Forensic Architecture, which operates from Goldsmiths University and is headed by Israeli architect Eyal Weizman. The institute documents human rights violations around the world using advanced technological means.

The researchers at Forensic Architecture built a computer model of historical Tantura, and managed to locate the new graves using the analysis of historical aerial photographs and comparing them with their contemporary equivalents. They also used addition to oral testimonies, conducted a land survey, and examined the sites where the graves seemed to be located.

The four sites, according to Forensic Architecture's report, printed in Haaretz.

Haaretz says that Israel denies that a massacre took place at Tantura, and added that historians still dispute what exactly took place in the village.

The new research also indicates that some of the village's residents may still be buried under its lands to this day.

Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights, a human rights group based in Haifa, called on the Israeli authorities to fence off the burial sites and place signs near them.

"The results are clear and convincing, and there is a lot of evidence," the director of the organization's legal department told Haaretz, calling for an end to the desecration of graves.

An independent expert on aerial photographs described the methodology as "acceptable, reasonable and professionally sound," after Haaretz presented him with the report.