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BAGHDAD – More than 200 mass graves containing 12,000 bodies have been discovered in areas of Iraq formerly controlled by the Islamic State, UN investigators said Tuesday.
The 202 graves verified by investigators are concentrated in the north and west of Iraq, areas under the control of the Islamic State from 2014 to 2017. A joint report from the United Nations Mission United Nations in Iraq and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights described the sites as activists. "Inheritance of Terror"
The deaths occurred in what the United Nations called systematic and widespread violence, a campaign that "could be war crimes, crimes against humanity and possible genocide".
"The horrific crimes committed by ISIL in Iraq have made headlines, but the trauma suffered by the families of the victims is constant.Thousands of women, men and children are still missing, "said Michelle Bachelet, commissioner for human rights at the United Nations. State. "These graves contain the remains of those who were murdered without mercy for not conforming to the twisted ideology and rule of ISIL."
The Iraqi authorities have so far exhumed 1,258 bodies from 28 sites, said the United Nations, making it difficult to establish the exact number of bodies in the graves documented in the report. The international organization urged officials to quickly identify the victims and return the bodies to their loved ones. Investigators said that the smallest site, west of Mosul, contained eight bodies; we think the biggest is the Khasfa Sinkhole near Mosul, which can hold thousands.
During its three years of government, the Islamic State terrorized local residents and carried out well-known executions of targeted individuals for their links to the government, their sexual orientation and other reasons. Activists too went after members of ethnic and religious minorities, including Christians and Yazidis.
United Nations officials in Iraq had previously estimated at 30,000 the number of civilians killed by the Islamic State, a number that "should be considered an absolute minimum," investigators said. It is unknown how many victims have been buried in mass graves, but the report suggests that it is a significant proportion of the total.
The United Nations stated that it was likely that other mass graves would be discovered.
He also noted that the Iraqi bureaucracy prevented people from finding missing relatives because the information was not centralized. "Their families have the right to know what happened to their loved ones," Ms. Bachelet said.
Investigators recommended the establishment of a national databank similar to that set up in Bosnia and Rwanda.
