Mass grave found in Iraq’s Najaf

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Authorities in the Iraqi shrine city of Najaf on Monday announced the discovery of a mass grave believed to date back to the 1991 uprisings against the former Saddam Hussein regime.

According to the Najaf Governorate Office, representatives from the specialized center in the Police Command and Forensic Evidence and the cadre of the Mass Graves Division in the Najaf Martyrs Directorate began the initial investigation of the human remains.

Haider Khattar, Head of the Mass Graves Division, explained that the work team is waiting until the mass graves team at the Martyrs Directorate arrives at the site and carries out a technical inspection.

He added that the site is located near the southern Hawally Road near Najaf’s Razavi.

Iraq contains over 200 mass graves, half of which have been unearthed. Many of these mass graves are from when Saddam Hussein brutally ruled over Iraq. Others, however, are more recent, created by ISIS, which also committed genocide in Iraq, most infamously against the Yezidi minority of Sinjar in 2014.

Iraqi authorities have discovered 98 mass graves that contain victims of the former Baathist regime, of which 76 have been unearthed. Sites of mass killings left by Saddam’s government tend to be very large and continue to be discovered to this day.

Human Rights groups say that 300,000 people were executed during Saddam’s rule and buried in mass graves throughout the country.