Shafaq News- Nineveh

Authorities in Iraq's Nineveh province will hand over the remains of 47 people killed by the Islamic State group (ISIS) to their families on Tuesday, at a memorial ceremony in Mosul, a local source told Shafaq News.

The victims, from areas south of Mosul, include soldiers and civilians executed by ISIS during its control of the city, the source said. Their remains were recovered from a mass grave south of Mosul by teams from the Martyrs Foundation, the state body responsible for victims of terrorism, and were identified through recent DNA matching.

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

After the official handover, an official and public funeral procession will set off from central Mosul toward Qayyarah subdistrict.

ISIS seized Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, in 2014 and held it until Iraqi forces retook it in 2017. Hundreds of mass graves have since been found across areas the group controlled.

A UN Human Rights Office and UNAMI report documented 202 mass grave sites in the provinces of Nineveh, Kirkuk, Saladin, and al-Anbar, containing the remains of women, children, the elderly, disabled persons, and members of Iraq's armed forces and police.

Read more: Discover Iraq: Nineveh rebuilds its heritage and future