Iraqi authorities have discovered a mass grave of more than 100 victims allegedly executed by members of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group in a cave west of Mosul. Iraqi forces found the mass grave after liberating the area in 2017, but the exhumation of the bodies did not begin until May of this year, the agencies reported.
The remains will be handed over to forensic experts, said the head of the excavations Ahmed Kusai. A team of investigators led by Qusai is looking for mass graves from the period after 2014, when IS took control of territories in Syria and Iraq, the German news agency dpa reports.
In a mass grave located about 60 kilometers west of Mosul, 139 corpses of men, women and children were discovered, who, according to a member of the civil protection of the Nineveh province, belonged to the Yazidi and Turkmen communities in the Tel Afar district, reports the Spanish news agency Efe.
A decade ago, IS declared a caliphate in areas of Iraq and neighboring Syria, where civil war is still ongoing. IS cells are still active in both countries.
Source: svet24.si
