ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Two mass graves were discovered in Sinjar’s Siba Sheikh Khidir village on Friday. The identity of a body in one of the sites has been revealed, with expert teams set to excavate the graves in the near future.

In recent days, a displaced person who returned to the Siba Sheikh Khidir village, located on the border of Sinjar district, attempted to level a piece of land to build a house when he discovered a body buried beneath the soil.

Khairy Ali Ibrahim, director at Petrichor Human Rights Organization, told The New Region that “initially it was reported that only one body was found at that location, but when teams visited the site, it turned out this location was a mass grave,” noting that another mass grave was discovered around 20 meters away.

“It is still unknown how many bodies are in those graves, and we are waiting for expert teams to come and excavate those graves,” added the director.

According to Ibrahim, the body belongs to an individual named “Sido Abbas Juko,” a Yazidi man who was killed in August 2014 alongside a number of others in the village, during the Islamic State’s (ISIS) reign of terror in Sinjar.

According to data from the organization, 95 mass graves have so far been identified in the district, of which only 68 have been excavated, resulting in the extraction of 850 bodies. However, only 96 of the extracted bodies have so far been identified.

On August 3, 2014, ISIS militants seized control of the Yazidi heartland of Sinjar, launching a brutal campaign of killings, abductions, sexual assault, and forced conversions of members of the minority group.

More than 5,000 Yazidis were killed in the ISIS campaign, and over 6,000 others, mostly women and children, were abducted and sold into sex slavery.

At least 18 countries, including Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, and Switzerland, have officially recognized ISIS' crimes against the Yazidi community as a genocide.

Reporting by Hevi Karam