More than 200 mass graves containing the remains of thousands of people killed by Islamic State have been discovered in northern and western Iraq, according to a UN report that was released on Tuesday.
The report by UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the UN Human Rights Office documents the existence of 202 mass graves in the governorates of Ninewa, Kirkuk, Salah al-Din and Anbar. The sizes of the graves range from eight to what could be thousands of bodies, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR).
The report emphasises that the evidence gathered will be critical in prosecuting Islamic State fighters for war crimes committed against civilians but also in helping families to find out what happened to those who have gone missing, said the OHCHR.
In support of bereaved families, the report called for a centralized registry of missing persons as well as a federal Office of Missing Persons to be established.
“Meaningful truth and justice requires the appropriate preservation, excavation and exhumation of mass grave sites and the identification of the remains of the many victims and their return to the families,” the report said, according to OHCHR.
To bring this about, the report called on the international community for more resources and technical support.
The Islamic State group invaded Iraq in 2014 and waged a three-year-long campaign of terror against non-Muslims, forcing most of its population, including Christians in the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq, to flee for their lives. Thousands of others were tortured and killed.
In March security forces discovered the remains of 40 Christians in a mass grave in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. After capturing the city in 2014, IS had warned Christians to “leave or face execution”.
In July, Human Rights Watch called for more support in unearthing several mass graves in and around the city of Raqqa in northern Syria, containing the remains of thousands of bodies of civilians killed by IS fighters, residents killed in airstrikes and of IS fighters.
