Daesh turns sinkhole into mass grave in Iraq
athbah (Iraq) — The sinkhole that could be the largest mass grave in Iraq’s latest conflict is barely visible from the road, nothing more than a small depression behind a desert ridge near Mosul.
The place known as the Khasfah (an Arabic word for a crack or a hole that opens up in the ground) was once a local curiosity, a natural formation that many locals believe was caused by a meteorite.
But the Daesh group transformed it into a “place of death” after capturing the area in June 2014, using it as an execution site and a mass grave where they disposed of victims, according to local residents.
“They would bring them blindfolded, their hands tied behind their backs. The Khasfah would be in front of them, they would make them kneel down, shoot them in the head and push them in,” said Mohamed Yassin, 56, a resident of the nearby town of Hammam Al Alil.
A retired soldier, he said he saw people being executed at the site on several occasions after Daesh captured the area in June 2014.
He was in the area regularly, transporting oil from a site just metres away, and said he saw executions there at least six times.
Most of those killed, he said, were policeman, soldiers or government employees, judged guilty for their association with the Iraqi state.
“People became afraid of the place, it became a place of death, a place where you’d be executed.”
Hussein Khalaf Hilal, 73, was taken to the Khasfah by Daesh fighters who accused him of violating their rules by treating people with religious folk medicine.
“They came to the house, they blindfolded me, tied my hands behind my back and took me away in a car with blacked out windows,” he told AFP. “They took me there because they wanted me to pledge allegiance, to frighten me.” He said Daesh militants smarched people into the pit. “They would line them up, ten by ten, 15 by 15,” he said.
He declined to pledge allegiance, but asked for a chance to consider the matter, and was taken to prison instead. —