A ‘legacy of terror’: ISIS left more than 200 mass graves in Iraq

More than 200 mass graves holding as many as 12,000 bodies have been found in areas of Iraq once controlled by the Islamic State, the United Nations said on Tuesday. The findings were highlighted in a joint report released by the UN mission to Iraq and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which called the sites a “legacy of terror.”

Most of the graves are in the four provinces of northern and western Iraq where the Islamic State’s caliphate acted as the government: Anbar, Kirkuk, Salahuddin and Nineveh, which includes Mosul, the largest city once controlled by the extremists. They range from small burial sites with eight bodies, to massive pits believed to hold thousands. The biggest is believed to be the Khasfa Sinkhole near Mosul.

“I can only say that the number of the victims of the mass graves is much bigger than the numbers in the report,” said Dhia Kareem, head of the Mass Graves Directorate in Iraq. He said eyewitnesses estimated there were 6,000 bodies in the Khasfa Sinkhole.

“ISIL’s horrific crimes in Iraq have left the headlines, but the trauma of the victims’ families endures, with thousands of women, men and children still unaccounted for,” Michelle Bachelet, the UN human rights commissioner, said, referring to the Islamic State. “These graves contain the remains of those mercilessly killed for not conforming to ISIL’s twisted ideology and rule.”

The grave sites could provide valuable forensic evidence, but the scale of the job has made collections daunting. The deaths occurred in what the UN has labelled systematic and widespread violence, a campaign that “may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possible genocide.”

The UN has estimated that 30,000 civilians were killed by the Islamic State from 2014 to 2017 — “a number that should be considered an absolute minimum.” But many of those victims were found and buried by their families. That so many thousands are in the 202 mass graves identified so far is shocking — and only 28 of those graves have been thoroughly exhumed.

© 2018 New York Times News Service