Over 200 mass graves found in former IS territory in Iraq

GENEVA: More than 200 mass graves containing thousands of victims of IS extremists have been discovered in Iraq, but excavating them poses lethal dangers, the United Nations reported.

There may be many more sites besides the 202 that have been documented in the northern and eastern regions of Nineveh, Kirkuk, Salah al Din and Anbar, the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva said.

Between 6,000 and more than 12,000 bodies are estimated to lie in these graves, including those of women, children, the elderly and disabled people, as well as police officers and soldiers.

“These graves contain the remains of those mercilessly killed for not conforming to [IS’S] twisted ideology and rule, including ethnic and religious minorities,” said Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights.

Forensic evidence from these sites will be important for bringing the perpetrators to justice, the UN organisations said.

IS seized large areas of Iraq between mid-2014 and the end of 2017. Iraq declared victory over the militant group in December after a Us-backed campaign of three years.

However, the group is still active in several of the regions where mass graves have been found, making it dangerous to dig out the remains of the victims.

The UN believes that IS fighters contaminated some of the graves with bombs that could explode if a body is moved.

In Mosul, suicide bombs have been found on corpses of what appear to be women and children.

In addition, Iraq’s authority that deals with mass graves only has 43 staff members and is grappling with a lack of storage space and equipment. To date, the authority has excavated only 1,258 bodies.

While some mass graves contain as few as eight victims, the largest known site, in Al Khasfa, is believed to contain up to 4,000.

Iraqis also find it very hard to find missing relatives because of bureaucratic procedures that require them to report to five separate authorities, according to the UN report. “Their families have the right to know what happened to their love ones. Truth, justice and reparations are critical to ensuring a full reckoning for the atrocities committed by [IS],” Bachelet said.

The first mass grave of IS victims was found as far back as in September 2014 in Bardi, a village in the northern Nineveh region.