Iraq excavates Khasfa, nation’s biggest Islamic State mass grave

It has been announced by Iraqi authorities that they have begun to exhume Khasfa, the nation’s largest mass grave site of the Islamic State (ISIS) victims, Arab Weekly plus agencies reported on August 18th.

The mass grave site, located near Mosul, is estimated by authorities to house the remains of between 4,000 to 15,000 victims of the Islamic state (ISIS). Although, the head of the Iraqi initiative’s search and rescue team, Ahmed Qusay al-Asadi, has stressed “there is no specific number of victims.” The terror group occupied the city of Mosul from 2014 until its expulsion in 2017.

The Khasfa pit, which is 150 meters deep and 110 meters wide, was the site of one of 2016’s most egregious crimes. At Khasfa in 2016, ISIS executed 280 people in just 24 hours.

Already, experts have found “scattered bones” in the site near Mosul – an early indication of the tragedies waiting to be excavated.

Asadi has told reporters that the pit “contains victims from all ethnicities and sects” including “army personnel and victims among the Yazidis and Mosul residents, all of whom were executed by ISIS.”

The Yazidi’s, a group who have long been persecuted for their religious beliefs, were targeted and brutally killed by ISIS during the group’s occupation of Iraq.

ISIS have a history of brutally executing people who they see as “infidels” – people who follow non-Islamic religions. February 15th of this year marked the 10 year anniversary of the execution of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian men on a Libyan beach by ISIS.

Each body exhumed at Khasfa and each victim identified will bring evidence that can be used to potentially prosecute members of ISIS in court.

The Nineveh governor, Abdulqadir al-Dakhil, has said he will “erect a memorial at this site or another location to commemorate the Khasfa martyrs.”

Khasfa is just one of over 200 grave sites in Iraq alone, which are potentially home to 12,000 bodies, following the violence of the Islamic state, the United Nations has said.

Arab Weekly plus agencies, Maghrebi.org