Nov 14, 2015

AFP: Mass grave of ‘Yazidi women executed by ISIS’ found in Iraq

A mass grave site in Khana Sor, Iraq, where ISIS militants executed and buried fleeing Yazidis. Photo Yusuf Sayman/BuzzFeed News

Lebanon’s The Daily Start reports, quoting AFP:

IRBIL, Iraq: A mass grave believed to hold the bodies of dozens of women executed by ISIS was found Saturday in Iraq’s Sinjar, where Kurdish forces are clearing bombs the extremists left.

Kurdish regional president Massud Barzani announced the “liberation of Sinjar” Friday, a day after the launch of a major ground operation to drive out ISIS that ended in not only a military victory for him, but a political one as well.

The bombs must be removed before the northern town’s mainly Yazidi residents, from a minority group who were targeted in a brutal ISIS campaign of massacres, enslavement and rape, can return to begin rebuilding their lives.

And with the town retaken, new evidence of the extremists’ horrific abuses against Yazidis is beginning to emerge.

Officials found the site of the mass grave based on information from young women enslaved by ISIS who claimed to have witnessed the execution of dozens of Yazidi women before later escaping.

Miyasir Hajji, a local council member, told AFP the grave on the edge of the town, which has not yet been excavated, is thought to contain the bodies of 78 women aged from 40 to around 80.

“It seems that the (ISIS) terrorist members only wanted young girls to enslave,” Hajji said, referring to the extremists using women as sex slaves who can be bought and sold.

Mahma Khalil, the local official responsible for the Sinjar area, confirmed that the mass grave had been found, and estimated it held some 80 victims. […]