Mass grave of 400 ISIS victims discovered in Northwestern Iraq
Iraqi security forces discovered yet another mass grave containing the bodies of at least 400 people slain by ISIL Takfiri terrorists in the city of Sinjar in Northwestern Nineveh Province.
Al-Sumariyah television network cited an informed Iraqi source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, on Thursday, as saying that the victims are mainly from the Izadi minority “brutally murdered” by Deash (ISIS or ISIL) militants.
Back in August 2014, ISIL militants overran Sinjar, killing, raping and enslaving large numbers of Izadi Kurds. The region was recaptured in November 2015, during an operation by Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Izadi fighters. Since then, Iraqi security forces have discovered dozens of mass graves across Nineveh Province.
Iraqi Kurdish officials have declared that around half of the members of the Yazidi minority group kidnapped by the ISIL group three years ago are still missing.
Khairi Bozani, a top official with the ministry of religious affairs of the autonomous Kurdish region of Northern Iraq, said some 6,417 Yazidis had been abducted by ISIL militants since August 2014.
Up until December 2017, only 3,207 of them had been rescued or managed to escape, the official added.
Bozani stressed that the remaining 3,210 Yazidis were still either held by the terrorists or considered missing. The figures include 1,507 women or girls. In addition, 2,525 Yazidis children are now orphans while the parents of 220 others are still unaccounted for.
According to Bozani, nearly four dozen mass graves containing the remains of Yazidis people have been found in recent years.
The Endowments and Religious Affairs Ministry of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government announced in early August that ISIL’s genocide against Yazidis had forced nearly 360,000 members of the minority group to flee their hometowns, and that another 90,000 had left Iraq and taken refuge in other countries.
It added that ISIL terrorists had kidnapped 6,417 Izadi Kurds, including 1,102 women and 1,655 children, since 2014.
The largest mass grave on the territory of Iraq, allegedly containing the bodies of more than four thousand people, was found late February not far from the city of Mosul near the Baghdad-Mosul road.
According to reports, the number of dead bodies was more than four thousand, making it the largest mass grave on the territory of Iraq so far. The bodies belonged to Iraqi security forces who have been killed by the ISIL back in the summer of 2014 when the terrorist group first captured the area.
Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has declared the end of military operations against the ISIL group in the Arab country.
ISIL began a terror campaign in Iraq in 2014, overrunning vast swathes in lightning attacks. Iraqi forces then launched operations to eliminate ISIL and retake lost territory.
Source: Farsnews
