Remains of 11 Yezidi victims of ISIS unearthed in Sinjar

An aerial picture shows mourners gathering around coffins wrapped with the Iraqi flag during a mass funeral for Yazidi victims of ISIS in the village of Kojo in Sinjar district, Feb. 6, 2021. (Photo: Zaid Al-Obeidi/AFP)
An aerial picture shows mourners gathering around coffins wrapped with the Iraqi flag during a mass funeral for Yazidi victims of ISIS in the village of Kojo in Sinjar district, Feb. 6, 2021. (Photo: Zaid Al-Obeidi/AFP)

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The bodies of 11 Yezidis believed to be killed by ISIS were uncovered from a newly discovered mass grave in the town of Sinjar, according to a security source.

The unearthing is the latest in the process of recovering remains of people killed in ISIS’s massacre of the Yezidi (Ezidi) minority after the terrorist group overran Sinjar in 2014. The United Nations estimates that ISIS killed around 5,000 Yezidi men and forced 7,000 women and girls into sexual slavery, and has deemed the crimes a genocide.

The newly discovered bodies include men and women of varying ages, according to a Sinjar police official. The remains were referred to a forensic office in Iraq’s capital Baghdad for further investigation, the official told Kurdistan 24.

In February, more than 100 Yezidis were reburied in a ceremony in Sinjar after the UN investigative team UNITAD and local forensic authorities positively identified their remains. 

UNITAD did not immediately reply to a Kurdistan 24 question about whether its team was involved in this week’s recovery.

The emergence of ISIS and its violent assault on the Yezidi-majority town of Sinjar led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Ezidis. Most of them fled to the Kurdistan Region, while others resettled in neighboring countries or Western states.

Others were not as lucky and remained stranded in the war zone, where they were subjected to atrocities and mass executions at the hands of the extremist group for years. ISIS militants forced women and girls into sexual slavery; kidnapped their children; forced religious conversions; executed scores of men; and trafficked women and girls across the areas they controlled in Iraq and Syria. Thousands of Yezidi men, women, and children still remain missing.

Editing by Joanne Stocker-Kelly