Excavation teams reveal heartbreaking details from Iraqi mass graves: "Mothers found embracing their children"
While evidence from the mass grave suggests most of the adult victims were executed by gunshot wounds to the head, the grave site reveals a harrowing detail about the fate of the children.
Dec. 30, 2024
ERBIL (Kurdistan24) – Iraqi mass grave excavation teams shared upsetting new details about victims found in a mass grave uncovered last week in Samawah.
The site contains about 150 remains, all Kurdish women and children.
While evidence from the mass grave suggests most of the adult victims were executed by gunshot wounds to the head, the grave site reveals a harrowing detail about the fate of the children.
As the evidence suggests, the children may have been buried alive.
Zia Karim, Director of Iraq's Mass Graves Directorate, stated: "In this mass grave, all victims were buried together. While the women show clear marks of gunshot wounds to their heads, there are no such signs on the children, particularly infants. This suggests they may have been buried alive."
The site in the Tel Shaikha area of Samawah includes three mass graves.
The first, exhumed in 2019, contained the remains of 172 Kurdish women and children. The newly discovered grave, some meters away, includes nearly 150 Kurdish victims who were killed approximately 40 years ago.
Ahmed Qusay, head of Iraq's mass graves excavation team, explained the challenging nature of their work: "One of the most challenging aspects we face is the way bodies are positioned on top of each other. We discover mothers still cuddling their babies. We handle these cases according to our team's established standards and experience."
The victims' exact origins within Kurdistan remain indefinite pending DNA analysis. They are among the nearly 182,000 Kurdish victims of the Anfal genocide campaign executed by Iraq's former Baathist regime.
The Anfal campaign (1987-1988) was a systematic genocide targeting the Kurdish population by Saddam Hussein's regime.
The discovery of mass graves is a reminder of the extent of these atrocities, with many sites containing women and children who were targeted specifically because of their Kurdish identity.
