Martyrs Foundation announces the opening of more than 200 mass graves

Baghdad - INA

The Martyrs Foundation announced today, Wednesday,  the documentation of 16,350 treatment of the mass graves’ martyrs, while it revealed the opening of a number of mass graves in a number of the country’s governorates.

The Director General of the Department of Victims of Terrorism and Military Operations at the Martyrs Foundation, Tariq Al-Mandalawi, said in a statement to the Iraqi News Agency (INA), that "the Martyrs Foundation documented 16,350 treatment for the families of the mass graves martyrs who were buried by the criminal Baath Party," noting that "their relatives were granted rights." The retirement pension as martyrs after their statements were documented by the Iraqi courts, which obtained the papers related to their martyrdom through the archives of our department, and they became martyrs within the institution.

He added, "Some of them are still missing and we have not discovered where their mass graves are yet," revealing that "more than 203 graves were opened by the Department of Mass Graves in the Foundation, where the bodies of the martyrs were found after the results of the DNA analysis were identified." Which".

He pointed out that "in the past period, more than one mass grave was opened, including a cemetery by the Department of Mass Graves Affairs, and the Yazidi component was the most martyred in it, amounting to more than 520 martyrs. They were killed in cold blood by ISIS terrorist gangs, and many were opened." Of the cemeteries in Salah al-Din and the outskirts of Baghdad, as well as in Najaf, Holy Karbala, Samawah and Nineveh, which were identified by the Department of Mass Graves Affairs, and work is underway in cooperation with international teams in order to open these cemeteries and then document the bodies and present them to the Ministry of Health to compare the results of DNA with their families ".

He pointed out that "the institution has a number of missing persons within the war mistakes and military operations. Their files were presented to the formed committees, as there are 25 committees in all governorates, and after documentation and presentation of the results to the subcommittee, it is determined whether it is included or not, and the integrity of the security situation is documented to include it."