Up to 15,000 victims of genocide may be buried in dozens of mass graves where ISIS disposed victims of its atrocities across its shrinking self-declared Caliphate in Syria and Iraq, according to a report.
In an extensive survey released Tuesday, the Associated Press documented and mapped 72 of the mass graves, but the number of dead might be much higher because many sites have not yet been excavated.
The scope of the carnage is also based on memories of traumatized survivors, the jihadists’ propaganda and a visual examination of the earth, the AP reported.
In Syria, 17 mass graves were located, including one holding the bodies of hundreds of members of a single tribe all but exterminated when the bloodthirsty extremists took over their region.
For at least 16 graves in Iraq, officials could not even guess the number of dead because the territory is still too dangerous to excavate.
Sinjar mountain in Iraq is filled with mass graves, some in territory reclaimed from ISIS after the group terrorized the Yazidi minority in August 2014. Other graves sit in the deadly no-man’s land that remains in the jihadists’ grip.
Rasho Qassim drives daily past the graves holding the remains of his two sons along a road with five burial sites that have not yet been excavated after the Yazidis – branded as “devil worshipers” – were overcome by ISIS in August 2014.
“We want to take them out of here. There are only bones left. But they said, ‘No, they have to stay there, a committee will come and exhume them later,'” said Qassim. “It has been two years but nobody has come.”
On the mountain’s northern flank, Arkan Qassem witnessed the ISIS militants slaughter his fellow villagers in Gurmiz, where they used bulldozers to plow earth over the corpses.
“I have lots of people I know there. Mostly friends and neighbors,” said Qassem, 32, who fled up the mountain. “It’s very difficult to look at them every day.”
As ISIS swarmed into the Sinjar area, Talal fled with his father, mother, four sisters and younger brother to an uncle’s farm outside the town of Tel Azer, hoping to avoid the jihadists’ wrath.
But their efforts were in vain. One man was shot in the head and the rest were ordered to convert from their unique blend of Christianity and Islam – but when they were rebuffed, the thugs separated about 35 girls and young women from the rest.
They then opened fire on the Yazidi men and boys, but Talal, who didn’t give his last name, managed to flee the massacre. He and three others survived — out of the group of 40.
Nouri Murat, Talal’s mother, found her husband, whose head was shattered. Her daughters, she said, were confused at first.
“This is strange, this body is wearing my father’s clothes,” one of them said.
The ISIS fighters have made no effort to hide their atrocities, which they have actually flaunted while they are targeted by the US-led coalition.
“They don’t even try to hide their crimes,” said Sirwan Jalal, head of Iraqi Kurdistan’s agency in charge of mass graves. “They are beheading them, shooting them, running them over in cars, all kinds of killing techniques, and they don’t even try to hide it.”
The group’s atrocities — which extend well outside the Yazidi region — have been exposed with the help of satellite images, which offered the clearest look at massacres such as the one at Badoush Prison in June 2014 that left 600 Shiite inmates dead.
Of the 72 mass graves documented by the AP, the smallest contains three bodies; the largest is believed to hold thousands, but no one knows for sure.
In Syria, activists believe there are hundreds of mass graves in ISIS-controlled areas. In Raqqa province, the bodies of 160 Syrian soldiers were found in seven large pits.
So far, at least 17 mass graves are known in Syria, though they are mostly unreachable.
“This is a drop in an ocean of mass graves expected to be discovered in the future in Syria,” said Ziad Awad, editor of an online publication on the Syrian city of Deir el-Zour who is trying to document the graves.