Iraqi officials have started digging whether a collective grave is believed to be left behind. Islamic state extremist group A decade ago during its anger across the country.
Local officials are working with the judiciary, forensic investigation, Martyr Foundation of IraqThe Directorate of Mass Graves reported on Sunday to complete the excavation of a synchronous site in Al-Khafa, south of the northern city of Mosul, the state-run Iraqi news agency.
Ahmed Quse Al-Asi, head of the Mass Graves Excavation Department of Shaheed Foundation, told The Associated Press that his team started work in Khasfa on 9 August at the request of the village of Neveh province. Abdulkadir al-Dakhil.
Operation is initially limited to assembled to the evidence of visible human remains and surface, while preparing for a complete announcement that officials say international support will be required.
After the initial 15 days of work, the Mosul teams of the foundation will build a database and start collecting DNA samples from the families of suspected victims.
Al-Asi reported that laboratory processing and a DNA database should first come to ensure proper identity. Once fully proceeded, once special aid is to navigate the dangers of the site, including sulfur water and unexplained armament.
Khasfa “is a very complex site,” he said.
He said that on the basis of witnesses and families and other informal testimony rejected accounts, officials estimate that thousands of bodies could be buried there, they said.
Large -scale tombs Thousands of bodies of those killed by the extremist group were included Found in Iraq And Syria.
During the rule of Saddam Hussein, some big tombs found in Iraq in the last two decades have been considered in the early two decades in the early 1990s. Other masses include tombs Body of women and children,
At its peak, Iraq and Syria have a half -sized area of the United Kingdom and was notorious for its cruelty. It shook the citizens and enslaved thousands of women from the Yazidi community, one of the oldest religious minorities in Iraq. The extremist group claims to be a genocide of Shias and other opponents, often releasing paintings of fierce videos and murders.
The group was defeated in Iraq in July 2017, when Iraqi forces captured the northern city of Mosul. Three months later, when the Kurdish forces captured the Syrian northern city of Raqka, it suffered a major setback, which was the actual capital of the group. The war against the war has officially ended in March 2019, when the US-supported and Kurdish-educated fighters captured the Syrian democratic forces. Eastern Syrian city BagauzWhich was the last sliver of the controlled land to extremists.
Rabah Noori Attiah, a lawyer, who has worked on more than 70 cases of missing people in Nineve, told AP that he told the information received from the foundation and separate Iraqi courts during his investigation as “the biggest collective grave in modern Iraqi history”.
Al-Asi, however, said, the investigators “can not yet confirm if it is the largest mass grave found in Iraq,” but according to the size of the space, we guess that it is one of the largest. ,
Attiah said that about 70% of human remains in Khasaf are considered to be related to the Iraqi army and police personnel, including other victims.
He said that he has interviewed many eyewitnesses of the region who saw that the fighters bring people by bus and kill them. “Many of them were removed,” he said.
Attiah had a police officer killed by his uncle and cousin IS, and is one of those who are expecting to identify the remains of the loved ones and fix them.
Testifying and witness statements, as well as the findings of other collective graves in Nineveh indicate that most of the killed military, police and other security forces personnel will be found in particular, as well as with the Yazidis of Sinjar and Shia victims from Tal Afar.
