Residents in southern and western Mosul, Iraq discovered a mass grave with over 320 bodies, including children, allegedly murdered by the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).
Witnesses claim “some body parts in the graves” belong to Iraq’s Yazidi Kurds. Identifying the bodies in a mass grave is often difficult, though the Islamic State’s campaign to exterminate Yazidis has been so pronounced that it is not unfeasible that this particular mass grave would be exclusively occupied by Yazidi victims of the terrorist group.
The Islamic State targeted Yazidis as they spread their caliphate across northern Iraq. The terrorist group considers the Yazidis, a religious minority, devil worshippers. As militants stormed through the areas, they demanded the Yazidis convert to Islam or die. Iraq’s Human Rights Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has claimed the militants buried over 500 Yazidis alive in Sinjar.
“In some of the images we have obtained there are lines of dead Yazidis who have been shot in the head while the Islamic State fighters cheer and wave their weapons over the corpses,” he described. “This is a vicious atrocity.”
Islamic State militants kidnapped women and young girls for the sex slave market. The men shipped many of the women and girls to Fallujah, a town west of Baghdad. The women who escaped spoke to the media about the horrific treatment they suffered at the hands of the militants. A 14-year-old girl, known as “Narin,” told journalist Mohammed A. Salih the terrorists presented her and a friend to two Islamic State militants as wives or concubines in Fallujah. In December, Iraq’s Ministry of Human Rights claimed the terrorist group murdered 100 women simply because they refused to marry or perform sexual acts with the terrorists.
“At least 150 females, including pregnant women, were executed in Fallujah by a militant named Abu Anas Al-Libi after they refused to accept jihad marriage,” reported the Ministry. “Many families were also forced to migrate from the province’s northern town of Al-Wafa after hundreds of residents received death threats.”
Resistance fighters discover numerous mass graves as they drive out the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. In December, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported a mass grave of more than 230 bodies was discovered in eastern Syria. Kurdish fighters “discovered nine mass graves” in the Yazidi village of Hardan, Iraq in late December. Iraqi authorities discovered over 148 bodies around the town of Hit in late October, while a mass grave with 150 bodies was discovered near the city of Ramidi.