DUBAI, UAE - The governor of Nineveh province announced Wednesday plans to open a mass grave at the Khasfa site south of Mosul, along with dozens of other burial sites in Tal Afar and Sinjar, in an effort to identify victims of atrocities committed by the Islamic State group (ISIS).

Governor Abdul Qader al-Dakhil, accompanied by Nineveh Court of Appeal President Raed Hamid al-Mosleh and senior security officials, visited Khasfa, one of the largest known mass graves in Iraq.

“We are launching a new project to exhume the Khasfa grave and ensure justice for the victims of genocide,” Dakhil said during a press conference at the site. “This effort will be carried out in coordination with judicial authorities, security forces, and other agencies.”

The initiative extends beyond Khasfa to include Bir Alu in Tal Afar and multiple sites in Sinjar, where ISIS carried out mass executions. The project aims to bring closure to victims’ families and hold perpetrators accountable.

In 2018, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) revealed that it had documented 202 mass grave sites for ISIS victims in the provinces of Nineveh, Kirkuk, Salahaddin, and Anbar, estimating the number of victims in the mass graves to be between 6,000 and 12,000 people.

With the ultimate territorial defeat of ISIS in Iraq, locals and authorities began discovering tens of mass graves across all the regions the extremist group had once overrun.

The Khasfa sinkhole, located south of Mosul, became one of ISIS’s primary execution sites between 2014 and 2017, when the militant group controlled large parts of Iraq. Thousands of civilians and military personnel, mostly from Nineveh, were killed and buried there.

ISIS seized Mosul and other territories in 2014, carrying out widespread killings, kidnappings, and displacements. The Iraqi government, backed by a US-led global coalition, launched a military campaign to retake the ISIS-seized territories, officially declaring victory over the group in 2017.