The remains of 605 people believed to have been killed by ISIL (ISIS) have been exhumed from a mass grave near a prison in northern Iraq over the past two years, a government agency has said.
The group, which took over vast swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014, had taken the inmates from the prison in the northern area of Badush and killed them near a waterway, according to the Mass Graves Department at the government-linked Foundation of Martyrs.
“The process of opening the graves took more than two years and resulted in the removal of 605 bodies,” department chief Dhiaa Karim told a press conference in Baghdad on Sunday, held in participation with a representative from the state-linked Medical Legal Directorate (MLD), according to Iraq’s state news agency INA.
According to Karim, 401 body parts and 204 full bodies were recovered and were handed over to the MLD for identification as they were exposed to events like floods and changes in the climate.
The Iraqi government declared military victory against ISIL in December 2017.
Iraq has since unearthed mass graves of people thought to have been killed by ISIL in several areas of the country.
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