Remains of 41 Yezidi victims of ISIS-led genocide return home

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) – On Wednesday, the remains of 41 more Yezidi victims of the 2014 ISIS-led genocide against the religious minority were returned to their families to be laid to rest in Sinjar (Shingal).

Earlier, the bodies were sent to Baghdad for DNA testing, afterwards receiving a state-sponsored funeral.

Read More: New Yezidi Genocide Memorial inaugurated in Sinjar

On Aug. 3, 2014, ISIS launched its genocide against the Yezidis, killing men, enslaving women, and displacing thousands to the Kurdistan Region.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad’s Nadia Initiative in a statement said so far a total of 215 victims have been identified and returned to their loved ones after the liberation of Shingal.

“The process of exhuming mass graves and identifying remains continues to be painfully slow, and in recent cases, has been done in an unprofessional and disrespectful manner,” Nadia's initiative said.

Read More: Yezidi women remain missing 8 years after Yezidi genocide

“Therefore, we call on the Iraqi Government to create a team of professionals dedicated specifically to the exhumation of mass graves in Sinjar, and to do so expeditiously,” it said.

Moreover, the Coalition for Just Reparations, an alliance of civil society organizations in Iraq, said in a post on X as the tenth anniversary of the genocide approaches, “the investigation and excavation all mass graves must continue.”

Editing by Dastan Muwaffaq