‘A crime that shocks the mind’: Iraq exhumes mass grave site left by ISIS

Iraqi officials have exhumed human remains from what they believe is a mass grave that the Islamic State (ISIS) left behind in the Middle Eastern country, The Associated Press reported. The Iraqi Martyrs Foundation confirmed to the state-run Iraqi News Agency that the country’s Forensic Medicine Department will examine all recovered remains.

Workers in northern Iraq are excavating a site in the Iraqi city of al-Khasfa, about 73 miles east of the Iraqi-Syrian border, the AP reported. Authorities are collaborating with the judiciary, forensic investigations, Directorate of Mass Graves and Iraq’s Martyrs Foundation to recover human remains. 

Ahmad Qusay al-Asady, head of the Martyrs Foundation, told the news agency that full exhumation of the remains requires specialized assistance to navigate site hazards, which include sulfur water and unexploded munitions. 

He estimated the site could contain thousands of bodies. Work at the site is limited to gathering visible human remains and surface evidence. The Martyrs Foundation will create a database after 15 days of work to collect DNA from families of suspected victims, the AP reported.

Abdulqadir al-Dakhil, governor of the Nineveh province, described the mass grave during a press conference as a “crime that shocks the mind and conscience,” according to the Iraqi News Agency. 

Between 2013 and 2017, when ISIS occupied about one-third of Syria and 40% of Iraq, about 20,000 people from various ethnic and religious backgrounds were executed. 

“On a single day, more than 2,000 Mosul residents were executed, including 600 from the Wadi Hajar area,” al-Dakhil said. 

Basim Al-Awadi, an Iraqi government spokesperson, wrote on X that evidence of ISIS’ terrorist rule is still emerging years after the group lost control of its territory. He said the government is committed to identifying all victims and notifying families. 

“Day after day, with increasing evidence,” he wrote, “the extent of the brutality practiced by terrorism is solidified, representing an extension of the dictatorial practices committed by the ousted regime against our people. It also confirms the honorable victory of the Iraqis, and that the precious blood sacrificed for this victory was not shed in vain.”

ISIS laid possibly thousands of bodies

The United Nations said in a 2018 report that the site is believed to be the biggest that ISIS created. The humanitarian organization documented 202 mass grave sites with women, children, Iraqi soldiers and some foreign workers. At the time, the U.N. said 1,258 bodies were exhumed from the sites by Iraq’s Mass Graves Directorate.

The organization added that ISIS killed about 30,000 civilians and injured 55,150 from 2014 through 2017. 

“These figures should be considered an absolute minimum,” the U.N. said in 2018. 

ISIS “committed systematic and widespread violence and abuses of international human rights law,” the U.N. said, adding that the group’s acts “may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide.”

It added that there are people presumed dead, in ISIS captivity or trafficked out of Iraq. Mass grave sites were found in Nineveh, Kirkuk and Baghdad provinces, to name a few. 

The director general of mass graves at the Martyrs Foundation, Diaa Kareem, told the Iraqi News Agency the excavation adhered to international standards while creating a database and reference blood samples. 

“The final classification in the dry morgue will be conducted by the Forensic Medicine Department before announcing the final numbers,” he said.

Rise and fall of ISIS

According to the nonprofit Human Rights Watch, ISIS committed widespread abuses, including murders and human trafficking. The group claimed responsibility for numerous attacks in more than a dozen countries, including France and the United Kingdom.

The National Counterterrorism Center said the group started in April 2004 as a faction of al-Qaida. It renamed itself to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, refocusing its rule in the two countries and those surrounding it.

CNN reported that Iraqi forces liberated all of Iraq’s territory from ISIS’ control in December 2017. The military told the network that it had taken control of the entire Iraqi-Syrian border. 

The terrorist group now has limited ground control, but still poses a global threat. The Foreign Policy Research Institute said in a March 2024 analysis that ISIS and its affiliates have managed to adapt into a decentralized network of regional branches that coordinate high-profile terrorist attacks. One of the most organized branches is ISIS-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, in Afghanistan. 

“ISIS-K is currently the Islamic State’s standard bearer and most operationally capable affiliate, drawing comparisons to al-Qaida’s Yemeni branch in the Arabian Peninsula, which developed a reputation for its ability to develop high-profile terrorist plots,” according to the institute.