Iraqi paramilitary forces announced on Saturday that they had discovered a mass grave at Badush prison near Mosul containing the remains of hundreds of people executed by ISIL.
ISIL reportedly killed up to 600 people after seizing the jail in 2014, and was also said to have held hundreds of kidnapped women from Iraq's Yazidi minority at the facility.
Iraqi government forces advance towards a cement plant in the village of Badush, some 15 kilometers northwest of Mosul on March 9, 2017. /CFP Photo
The Iraqi military said that forces from the Hashed al-Shaabi – an umbrella group of pro-government forces that are dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias – were among the units that recaptured the prison from the jihadists.
Hashed forces found "a large mass grave containing the remains of around 500 civilian prisoners in (Badush) prison who were executed by (ISIL) gangs after they controlled the prison during their occupation of Mosul," they said.
A cemetery for people who were killed in the clashes is seen at a grave in a schoolyard east of Mosul, Iraq on January 11, 2017. /CFP Photo
The Hashed did not say how they reached that figure, which could not be independently confirmed, but it is in keeping with a Human Rights Watch report of ISIL killings at Badush. According to HRW, ISIL gunmen executed up to 600 inmates from Badush prison on June 10, 2014, forcing them to kneel along a nearby ravine and then shooting them with assault rifles.
Iraqi lawmaker Vian Dakhil also said that year that the jihadists were holding more than 500 Yazidi women at Badush.
Iraqi fighters from the Abbas Brigade, which fights under the umbrella of the Shiite popular mobilization units, fire towards enemy positions in the village of Badush, some 15 kilometers northwest of Mosul on March 9, 2017. /CFP Photo
ISIL targeted the Yazidi religious minority in a brutal campaign of executions, kidnapping and rape, killing men and holding women and girls as sex slaves.
ISIL overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since regained most of the territory they lost.
Iraqi forces launched an operation to retake Mosul – the last ISIL-held city in Iraq – in October, recapturing its eastern side before setting their sights on its smaller but more densely populated west.
(Source: AFP)
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