Ahmed Kosa Esedi, Head of the Shengal Mass Grave Excavation Team, made a press statement regarding the ongoing work to open mass graves in the Yazidi town in southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq).
Ahmed Kosa Esedi stated that the institution’s employees, in coordination with the Forensic Medicine Institute, conducted investigations, analyses, and excavations related to mass graves, revealing that his teams had opened 74 of the 90 mass graves identified since 2019.
Ahmed Kosa Esedi reported that they had begun excavating a mass grave in the village of Herdan over the past 15 days, stating: “Work will be carried out to excavate mass graves in the Jazira district and the town of Acac. First, work will begin on excavating 5-6 mass graves in the Jazira district, which have been recorded using data from the Martyrs’ Institution.”
In the summer of 2014, ISIS overran large parts of Iraq. On August 3 of that year, the jihadist militia committed genocide and femicide in the Yazidi main settlement area of Shengal, west of Mosul. Through systematic massacres, rape, torture, expulsion, enslavement of girls and women, and the forced recruitment of boys as child soldiers, the Yazidi community experienced the 74th genocide in its history.
According to recent estimates, around 10,000 people fell victim to the ISIS massacres, and more than 400,000 others were driven from their homes. Over 7,000 women and children were abducted, and around 2,500 of them are still missing today.