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Iraq Starts Emptying Mass Graves in Search for Cadets Killed by ISIS Iraq Empties Mass Graves in Search for Cadets Killed by ISIS
(about 11 hours later)
BAGHDAD — Iraqi officials have begun exhuming bodies from a series of mass graves containing some of the nearly 1,700 Iraqi Air Force cadets massacred by the Islamic State in June. BAGHDAD — Among the mass graves being unearthed in Tikrit, soldiers spotted an old man carrying a large trash bag and trying to sneak away.
“We’re still digging but we don’t know how many graves there are yet,” Kamil Amin, the spokesman for the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry, said on Tuesday. “We’re expecting big numbers.” “Our men asked the old man, ‘What’s in the bag?’ ” said Haider Majeed, an official with the prime minister’s office who was there to help supervise the exhumations. He told the story on the Iraqiya television channel on Tuesday.
So far, he said, officials had found 11 mass graves, each containing dozens of bodies, all located in the sprawling complex of palaces in Tikrit, along the Tigris River, north of Baghdad. “This is my son,” the old man was quoted as saying. Officials took the bag and looked inside, finding a pile of bones and some clothing, but no proof of identity.
So far, 57 bodies have been identified,Mr. Amin said, adding that officials were still in the process of matching remains against a DNA database of the 1,686 cadets who were registered as missing from Camp Speicher, a former American air base outside Tikrit, now used as an Iraqi base. “How do you know that’s your son?” they asked. Under questioning, the man broke down and admitted that he did not know whose remains they were.
When extremists of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, overran Tikrit in June, officials at the air force academy at Camp Speicher ordered 1,700 cadets to return to their homes. They left, unarmed, and fell into the hands of Islamic State fighters. Camp Speicher itself never actually fell to the extremists. “I swear to God, I just wanted to take these bones to show to his mother and say, ‘This is our son,’ to stop her from crying, because she’s been crying for 10 months,” the man said.
The Islamic State posted videos showing groups of hundreds of the cadets being executed, and boasted of having killed 1,700 in all. The graves, believed to contain some of the remains of air force cadets massacred by the Islamic State in June, were discovered on Monday amid the complex of palaces built for Saddam Hussein outside Tikrit. State-run television on Tuesday showed images of the graves being unearthed and of skeletons, many with their hands tied behind their backs. Small yellow flags, with a number for each victim, were staked out as forensics experts in plastic gloves carefully scraped the earth from each grave site. Soldiers lit candles, and some relatives wept.
Mr. Amin said that officials were still searching for other mass graves in the area because the 11 identified so far were unlikely to account for all of those missing. Eleven mass graves had been found, with the remains of 57 bodies identified, a fraction of the 1,686 air force cadets who were registered as missing in June from Camp Speicher, a former American base near Tikrit, according to Kamil Amin, the spokesman for the Human Rights Ministry.
Many of the victims were simply thrown into the Tigris River, where 35 bodies of cadets washed up at the nearest dam downstream, in Samarra. When extremists of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, overran Tikrit in June, officials at the air force academy ordered 1,700 cadets to return to their homes. They left Camp Speicher unarmed and fell into the hands of Islamic State fighters. Camp Speicher itself never fell to the extremists.
The Islamic State posted videos showing groups of hundreds of cadets being executed, and boasted that it had killed 1,700.
“We’re still digging, but we don’t know how many graves there are yet,” Mr. Amin said on Tuesday. “We’re expecting big numbers.”
Mr. Amin said that officials were still searching for other mass graves in the area because the 11 found so far were unlikely to account for all of the missing. Officials were aided in their search by Ali Hussein Kadhim, one of the few survivors of the massacre. He feigned death as those around him were killed.
Mr. Kadhim, who was interviewed by The New York Times a few months after the massacre, showed officials where some of the killings he had witnessed took place, according to Iraqiya.
Many of the victims’ bodies were thrown into the Tigris River, and the remains of 35 cadets washed up at the nearest dam downstream, in Samarra, in June.
“We expect the river itself to be the biggest mass grave,” Mr. Amin said. “And we expect that in every city of our area that is liberated we will find a mass grave full of those who opposed ISIS.”“We expect the river itself to be the biggest mass grave,” Mr. Amin said. “And we expect that in every city of our area that is liberated we will find a mass grave full of those who opposed ISIS.”
In the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, residents reported that the Islamic State had opened an office in the village of Athiba, just outside the city, to provide family members with the names of 300 people it had executed who were from villages south of Mosul. The families had still not been able to find the victims’ bodies, local officials said. In Kurdistan, members of the Yazidi minority, which is much persecuted by the Islamic State, complained that Kurdish officials had arrested their top military leader, Haider Qasim Sheshu, on Sunday and accused him of failing to submit to the authority of the Kurdish pesh merga forces in the area.
In far northern Iraq, members of the Yazidi minority complained that Kurdish officials had wrongfully arrested their top military leader, Haider Qasim Sheshu, because he would not submit to the authority of the Kurdish pesh merga forces in the area. “The pesh merga want to exploit our case and take supplies from the international community that are intended for us,” Ibrahim Hodeida, a Yazidi spokesman, said. “They are threatening us not to say anything and either just shut up or leave Sinjar.”
Mr. Sheshu is head of the Sinjar Protection Forces, and he commands a group of armed Yazidi fighters protecting refugees on top of Sinjar Mountain. The refugees are the remnants of the small Yazidi religious minority had fled attacks by ISIS, which considers the Yazidis to be apostates. The extremists had enslaved many Yazidi women, forcing them to convert and marry ISIS fighters. A spokesman for the Kurdish Regional Government, Umeed Sabah, said Tuesday at a news conference that Mr. Sheshu had been arrested because he refused to disband his fighters on Sinjar Mountain and join pesh merga fighters instead.
“The pesh merga want to exploit our case and take supplies from the international community that are intended for us,” said a Yazidi spokesman, Ibrahim Hodeida. “They are threatening us not to say anything and either just shut up or leave Sinjar.” “We announce that we will not allow any person to form illegal forces that are not under control of the pesh merga and will punish anyone who ignores such instructions,” Mr. Sabah said. Although Sinjar is not in Kurdistan, Kurdish forces have led the fight against the Islamic State in that area.
A spokesman for the Kurdish Regional Government, Umeed Sabah, said at a news conference on Tuesday that Mr. Sheshu was arrested because he refused to disband his fighters on Sinjar and join with pesh merga fighters instead.
“We announce that we will not allow any person to form illegal forces that are not under control of the pesh merga and will punish anyone who ignores such instructions,” Mr. Sabah said. Although Sinjar is not in Kurdistan, Kurdish forces have led the fight against ISIS in that area.