25 mass grave sites remain unopened in Iraq’s Nineveh – Shafaq News

Shafaq News- Baghdad

Twenty-five of 55 mass grave sites documented in Nineveh
province, northern Iraq, remain unopened, with overall work completed at only
54%, an Iraqi lawmaker said on Sunday.

Speaking at a press conference in Parliament, Rahima
Al-Jubouri said 30 sites have been opened, containing 94 individual mass graves
from which 1,931 sets of remains have been recovered and are still held by
forensic medicine authorities. Work has reached 58% in Sinjar and 47% in Mosul,
while substantial funds allocated to the Al-Khasfa mass grave, “where ISIS
executed 2,070 people in a single day, have yet to produce results matching the
level of spending, raising questions over how the money was used and the actual
progress made.

Read more: Iraq’s mass graves: A record of violence across five decades

Al-Jubouri had secured approval from the prime minister to
provide Nineveh with its own DNA testing equipment to accelerate the
identification of remains, “but the decision has yet to be implemented.”

In August 2014, ISIS seized Sinjar and launched a systematic
campaign against the Yazidi community, killing thousands, abducting 6,417
people, and forcing tens of thousands to flee. According to the Kurdistan
Region’s Office for Kidnapped Affairs, 3,595 captives have since been rescued,
while nearly 2,500 Yazidis remain missing and more than 200,000 remain
displaced.

Read more: The long shadow of Sinjar: Twelve years after the ISIS genocide