Mass graves of IS victims excavated
BAGHDAD: Iraqi forensic teams have begun excavating 12 suspected mass grave sites thought to hold the corpses of as many as 1 700 soldiers massacred last year by Islamic State (IS) militants as they swept across northern Iraq.
The mass killings last June of Shia soldiers from Camp Speicher, a former US base outside the Sunni city of Tikrit, has become a symbol of the brutality of IS fighters and their hatred for Iraq’s Shia majority.
The deaths showed Iraqis that the IS fighters, who have also attacked ethnic and religious minorities as well as fellow Sunni Muslims opposing them, were a new kind of foe.
The images of Shia soldiers being machine-gunned in their hundreds, posted online by the jihadists, could rank as the deadliest single act of bloodshed during a decade of periodic sectarian war in Iraq.
The exhumation of burial sites on the late dictator Saddam Hussein’s presidential compound came on Monday only days after IS militants were driven from the city by Iraqi forces and Shia paramilitaries.
“We (have) dug up the first mass grave site. Until now we found at least 20 bodies. Initial indications show indisputably that they were from the Speicher victims,” said Khalid al-Atbi, an Iraqi health official working with the forensic team sent to Tikrit.
“It was a heartbreaking scene. We couldn’t prevent ourselves from breaking down in tears. What savage barbarian could kill 1 700 persons in cold blood?” he asked.
Survivors of Speicher have described their ordeal last June as the Iraqi military chain of command unravelled and IS Sunni fighters descended on Tikrit, rounding up Shia soldiers for slaughter.
The victims’ families, who often express anger at Iraq’s political class for failing to provide them proper answers, have wondered for months about the fate of their friends and loved ones.
“At least the families will soon know the fate of their sons and cousins,” said Ali Hamad, whose cousin Kamal went missing at Speicher.