Iraqi Yazidi Mass Graves in Mosul Exceed 70

The number of mass graves containing the remains of people from  the Iraqi Yazidi minority discovered in  Mosul has reached 70.

Alghad Press quoted a source at al-Shohadaa (martyrs) institution saying that technical teams have explored more than 70 mass graves in Sinjar, Tal Afar and Al-Baaj, adding that a large number of those belonged to Yazidis killed under the self-styled Islamic State terroriost group’s rule, Iraqi News reported.

According to the source, many of those graves are prone to damage due to weather factors.

The source said the institution does not, however, possess a database of families who had lost members in a way that enables authorities to identify the affiliation of dead bodies.

A statistic released by the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Endowments and Religious Affairs Ministry in July said Islamic State’s massacres of Yazidis forced nearly 360000 of the religious minority to flee their areas. It said IS had kidnapped 6417 Yazidis since 2014, the report added. Those included 1102 women and 1655 children, the statistics show, adding that authorities had run into 43 mass graves of Yazidi victims slaughtered by IS.

IS massacred and enslaved thousands of Yazidis when they overran their Sinjar region, west of Nineveh.

In August, the United Nations said Yazidi atrocities under the IS continued. “The genocide is ongoing and remains largely unaddressed, despite the obligation of states…to prevent and to punish the crime,” the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria said in a report.

“Thousands of Yazidi men and boys remain missing and the terrorist group continues to subject some 3,000 women and girls in Syria to horrific violence including brutal daily rapes and beatings,” it added.