Iraqi authorities said they had exhumed the remains of 123 victims of massacres committed by the Islamic State, in order to match their DNA samples with their relatives who still do not know their fate.
For weeks, Baghdad and other provinces have been taking blood samples from the families of the victims of the Badush prison massacre, which was one of the most heinous crimes of the organization that controlled a third of Iraq between 2014 and 2017.
In June 2014, the organization - which was in the process of controlling the northwest of the country - transported about 600 men who were detained in Badush prison, in trucks to a valley, before its members shot them.
The Iraqi authorities did not discover their remains until about 3 and a half years after the defeat of the organization in March 2017.
Leaving the Islamic State responsible for perpetrating "genocide" in Iraq - according to the United Nations - which is one of the most serious crimes under international law;
About 200 mass graves, containing as many as 12,000 victims.
"There are thousands of families waiting for the fate of their missing sons," Nineveh Governor Najm al-Jubouri told AFP.
Iraq - which is also still discovering mass graves from the era of Saddam Hussein - has been working for years to identify the identities of the victims of the many stages of violence that passed through the country.