London is famous for its red buses, and last Wednesday, one of them was transformed when activists placed dozens of pictures on it to draw attention to the thousands of detained and missing people in Syria.

The “Freedom Bus” drove around the British capital with pictures of friends and relatives of the "Families for Freedom" campaigners, who said that those people are currently detained by the Syrian regime.

A “Set Them Free” banner was placed next to the pictures to deliver the activists’ message.

While the initiative kicked off in the UK, the Families for Freedom campaigners said that the bus will tour across Europe. They are even hoping that it will eventually drive all the way to Damascus.

Members of the women-led campaign sang the chimes of Big Ben from the bus’s top deck.

The activists said that in the four years that Ben Ben will go silent, it will miss over 200,000 of its bongs, which is almost the same number as the estimated missing and detained people in Syria.

Photo: Getty

According to the campaign’s website, the Syrian regime has kidnapped hundreds of thousands of Syrians.

Amongst the campaigners was Noura Ghazi Safadi, the wife of Bassel Khartabil, a Syrian activist who was reportedly executed in a Syrian government prison.

Noura’s husband was detained by the Assad regime in 2012. She was able to visit him in the notorious Adra Prison in Damascus, until he was transferred to a secret location, never to be heard from again.

In August this year, Noura as informed that her husband had been killed, according to an interview with The Sun.