Shafaq News- Duhok

Authorities in Duhok, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, on Monday began re-exhuming the remains of around 60 ISIS victims from a mass grave near the Sharaf Al-Din shrine in Sinjar district to conduct DNA tests and return their remains to their families.

Major Saad Samir, an investigator with Duhok’s Investigation and Evidence Collection Authority, told Shafaq News that the operation involves the Martyrs Foundation in Baghdad, the International Commission on Missing Persons, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Duhok’s Investigation and Evidence Collection Authority.

He added that authorities have so far opened and processed around 78 mass graves in the Sinjar area.

The remains, recovered from mass graves in Sinjar and surrounding areas, were buried on August 13, 2015, during a ceremony attended by Nechirvan Barzani, then prime minister of the Kurdistan Region, and other officials and religious and community figures.

Read more: The long shadow of Sinjar: Twelve years after the ISIS genocide