Shafaq News / A government team began a new excavation in al-Muthanna governorate's desert in search of remains in a mass grave that contain victims from the Barzani family, who were subjected to genocide by the Baathist regime.
The administrator of Basiya sub-district, Wassif al-Khalidi, told Shafaq News agency that recently, a new mass grave had been found, and all the paperwork for its victims was completed.
He added that the new team will stay in the desert for 30 days to find the remains of the Barzani victims in the mass grave that was found seven months ago.
On July 31, 1983, Saddam Hussein's regime launched the Anfal campaign, during which 8,000 citizens from Barzan region were arrested, transported to southern Iraq's deserts, and killed and buried in mass graves.
This campaign expanded towards other regions in Kurdistan, resulting in the death of at least 180,000 citizens, including children, women, and elderly people, as well as the displacement of hundreds of thousands of others.
On May 3, 2011, the Iraqi High Criminal Court acknowledged the Anfal campaign as "a genocide and a crime against humanity".
An uprising erupted in the Kurdistan region in 1983 against the rule of Saddam. As a response, the latter launched the Anfal campaign.
Saddam entrusted the leadership of the campaign to the Secretary-General of the North in the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, Lieutenant General Ali Hassan al-Majid al-Tikriti, who, on 16 March 1988, launched an aerial and artillery bombardment with chemical bombs on Halabja and its surrounding villages.
After 2003, the pillars of the former regime were arrested and a number of them, including Saddam Hussein, were convicted in the "Anfal" case. Some of them were sentenced to death, including Ali Hassan al-Majid.
