Iraq recovers remains of 139 likely IS victims from mass grave

Iraqi authorities have removed the remains of 139 people from a large pit believed to contain victims of the Islamic State (IS) group, an official said on Sunday.

The Alo Antar hole – a natural desert feature turned into a mass grave by IS jihadists – is located in Tal Afar, some 70 kilometres (40 miles) west of Mosul in northern Iraq.

It is not known how many bodies were dumped in the pit, but search efforts for other victims are ongoing.

"We have removed the remains of 139 persons and also human body parts," said Dia Karim, director of the mass graves department at the Foundation of Martyrs – a government institution tasked with finding mass graves and identifying remains.

"They include women and men," Karim said, adding that "according to testimonies, the victims date back to IS rule" or before when Al-Qaeda was present in the area.

Testimonies also suggest, according to Karim, that "the victims are Yazidis, Shiite Turkmen and security forces personnel from Mosul", the de facto capital of IS's self-declared "caliphate".

At its peak, the group ruled over swathes of Syria and Iraq, while its fighters committed beheadings, torture and enslavement, turning life into a living hell and leaving behind many mass graves.

In northern Iraq, they committed some of their worst atrocities against the Yazidis – an ethnic and religious minority – including mass executions and sexual slavery.

Ahmed Al-Assadi from the Foundation of Martyrs said the victims "were not buried but dumped in the hole", whose full depth ranges between 42 and 12 meters.

"Some of the victims had been shot and others were found with their throats cut", and several bodies were found in body bags.

Assadi added that some of the clothing found on them indicated that they might have been Yazidis or Turkmen, adding that other bodies were found in orange jumpsuits of the kind typically worn by IS hostages.

The bodies recovered from Alo Antar were taken to forensic departments to be identified using DNA testing.

The mass grave was discovered after Iraqi forces retook control of the area in 2017, but the work to recover the bodies only started in May of this year.

Iraqi authorities frequently announce the discovery of mass graves of IS victims, as well as those containing IS jihadists themselves and others dating to the rule of dictator Saddam Hussein, but the identification process is slow, costly and complicated.

The United Nations estimates the jihadists left behind more than 200 mass graves which might contain as many as 12,000 bodies.

A similar but much larger sinkhole known as Al-Khasfa in northern Iraq is also thought to contain the bodies of many IS victims.

In northern Syria, a 50-meter-deep gorge has been used as a dumping site for dead bodies during and after IS rule, according to a 2020 Human Rights Watch report.