The discovery of collective graves containing ISIL victims in northern Iraq. The Kurdish forces announced the discovery of another collective grave containing ISIL victims in northern Iraq.
A Kurdish Peshmerga unit found the remains of at least 11 Iraqi policemen in a mass grave left by ISIS in the north of the country.
AFP quoted Maj. Gen. Mohammad Rostam, deputy commander of the Garmian axis (Qartaba) in northern Iraq, as saying that the cemetery was found Thursday in the Duraji area near the Gaza Strip (the disputed area between the Iraqi Kurdistan region and the Iraqi government). The cemetery contains canals and pits that formed the hideout of ISIL.
He said the remains belonged to people believed to have been captured and killed by ISIS in 2018.
General Rostam explained that, in coordination with the Iraqi police and Peshmerga forces, the search for other bodies continues. He stressed that an engineering and medical team from the Iraqi police is present at the scene.
“The cemetery was found based on our information that there were ISIS hideouts in the area where they had detained Iraqi forces,” he said.
According to the official, the search operation has been underway since the beginning of the week by the Iraqi army and Peshmerga forces in large areas in the north of Diyala province and areas east of the city of Tuz Khurmato in Salah al-Din province.
Between 2014 and 2017, ISIS controlled large areas of Iraq, leaving more than 200 mass graves, according to UN figures. And these graves are likely to contain more than 12,000 bodies in Iraq and 5,000 in northern Syria.
