Iraq Starts Excavating Mass Grave Of Islamic State Victims 

Iraqi officials have started excavating a mass grave believed to hold victims of the Islamic State (IS) killed from 2014 until the militant group’s defeat three years later, Al Jazeera reported this week. 

The suspected grave site – a sinkhole about 500 feet deep and 360 feet wide – is located in al-Khafsa near the northern city of Mosul.  

It is believed to contain the remains of more than 4,000 people. Witnesses and officials claim some of the worst IS massacres took place in the area. 

IS took control of Mosul – Iraq’s second largest city – in 2014 and ruled an area roughly half the size of the United Kingdom that spanned Iraq and Syria. 

Ahmad Qusay al-Asady, head of the mass graves excavation department at the Iraqi Martyrs Foundation, told the Associated Press that the operation would first deal with recovering visible remains and any evidence on the surface. The foundation then planned to build a database and collect DNA samples from families of suspected victims. 

Full exhumation would require specialists because of the presence of hazardous materials such as unexploded ordnance at the site. 

Investigators have yet to determine its size, but some observers described it as “the largest mass grave in modern Iraqi history.” 

Around 70 percent of the remains in the grave are believed to belong to Iraqi security forces, with other victims including members of the Yazidi minority – a long-persecuted group that was heavily targeted by IS.  

Witnesses have claimed the Islamic State group would bring busloads of people to the site, many of whom were later decapitated, said al-Asady. 

Mass graves containing thousands of bodies believed to be IS victims have previously been found across Iraq and Syria. 

The war against the group officially ended in 2019 when US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces captured the eastern Syrian town of Baghouz.