Iraq: mass grave opens to identify victims of one of ISIS's worst crimes
On June 13, 2021, forensic experts check the human remains of victims of the 2014 Badouch massacre by the Islamic State (IS) group, after being exhumed from a mass grave in the northern Iraqi village of Badouch. -west of the city of Mosul.
AFP - ZAID AL-OBEIDI
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
In Iraq, 123 victims were exhumed from a mass grave left by the IS group near Mosul.
This mass grave, known to all as the “massacre site of the Badouch massacre”, could contain hundreds of other victims.
The excavation work had started three weeks ago.
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With our correspondent in Baghdad,
Lucile Wassermann
It is one of the largest mass graves of the Islamic State group known to date.
Discovered in 2017 in Badouch
near Mosul, it would contain 500 to 600 victims.
Former prisoners, mainly Shiites, executed by the jihadists in 2014.
This Sunday, June 13, the Iraqi authorities announced that they had exhumed 123 first bodies, three weeks after the start of the excavation work.
They will be transferred to the Baghdad Forensic Institute, where for several days now, families have been rushing to find out if doctors have not identified one of their relatives.
Because it is here that the bones are analyzed and that DNA tests are carried out to try to establish matches and therefore to identify the victims.
A crucial step in this period after Daesh where thousands of families have relatives officially missing.
In Iraq, the UN estimates that the Islamic State group left behind more than 200 mass graves, containing up to 12,000 bodies.
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