Thirty-nine bodies were returned to the Yazidi homeland from a forensic hospital in Mosul after being kept in Baghdad for two years, according to Rudaw’s Lamya Rasul.
Hundreds of family members awaited the bodies of their loved ones who came back in caskets covered by the Iraqi flag.
“We have been in contact with the forensic hospital for three or four years to receive the bodies back and today we received them,” a relative of one of the Yazidi victims told Rudaw. “We ask for the return of the remaining missing bodies. The people wait for the bodies of their relatives.”
This is the fifth round of Yazidi families taking back the bodies of their families, and the first time receiving them from Mosul.
“ISIS destroyed us,” a Yazidi woman who lost her brother said. “He was our father that took care of us.”
Around 95 mass graves of Yazidis killed by ISIS exist all over Iraq and only 43 of them have been exhumed.
The exhumation of mass graves began in 2019 in Shingal and then was halted for around one year due to the coronavirus pandemic. It resumed in October 2020.
The process is being carried out by the Iraqi government in coordination with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and is overseen by the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh (UNITAD).
In March, a mass grave was exhumed in Hardan village in Shingal, recovering the bodies of at least 30 Yazidis.
In February last year, the KRG and Iraqi government exhumed six Yazidi mass graves in Hardan, which contained 131 bodies
