Iraqi authorities announced that they exhumed the remains of 123 bodies from two mass graves in the northern province of Nineveh."The remains near Badush Prison are possibly of the jail s security personnel," Nineveh Governor Najm .
Iraq opens mass grave to identify Daesh victims
11 hours ago Human remains of those held prisoner by Daesh after being unearthed from a mass grave in Badush, Mosul. AFP
Gulf Today Report
Iraqi authorities said on Sunday the remains of 123 people killed by Daesh group militants had been removed from a mass grave in a bid to identify them in the northern province of Nineveh.
The Badush prison massacre was one of the worst crimes Daesh carried out after it seized control of a third of Iraq in a lightning offensive in 2014.
READ MORE In June that year, Daesh fighters attacked the northwestern prison, freeing Sunni Muslim inmates and forcing 583 mainly Shiite prisoners into a truck, before driving them to a ravine and shooting them.
Sulaimaniyah, Iraq – Adil Majeed looked distraught as he smoked a cigarette and recounted the devastating events of the late 1980s Anfal military offensive.
Unleashed by the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein against Kurdish people in the north, the campaign killed at least 100,000 Kurds, mostly civilians, with some estimates suggesting 180,000 people died. Thousands went missing and hundreds of villages were destroyed.
Rights organisations say the Anfal campaign was a systematic ethnic cleansing amounting to genocide.
Saddam claimed he was quelling a rebellion after Kurdish Peshmerga fighters – who were fighting against the government – sided with the enemy during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, and used Kurdish villages as their safe havens.
Survivors of the Anfal Kurdish genocide long for closure msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.