Shafaq News- Baghdad

Iraqi authorities have identified the remains of 25 missing people recovered from mass graves in Nineveh province after DNA tests matched them with relatives, the Supreme Judicial Council confirmed on Friday.

The Nineveh Court of Appeal Presidency authenticated the identification documents following forensic testing by Iraq’s Forensic Medicine Directorate, enabling the families to obtain death certificates, settle inheritance matters, and pursue other legal rights.

Read more: Iraq's mass graves: A record of violence across five decades

Excavations continue at dozens of sites across the province. Lawmaker Rahima Al-Jubouri said in August that 30 of 55 documented locations had been opened, covering 94 individual burial sites and yielding 1,931 sets of remains. She put progress at 58% in Sinjar and 47% in Mosul.

Nineveh contains mass graves from successive periods of violence, including those linked to ISIS, which seized large parts of the province in 2014. The group launched a systematic campaign against the Yazidi community in Sinjar that August, killing thousands and abducting 6,417 people. The Kurdistan Region’s Office for Kidnapped Affairs has recorded the rescue of 3,595 captives, while nearly 2,500 Yazidis remain missing and more than 200,000 displaced.

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