Iraq seeks global help to excavate al-Khafsa mass grave
Shafaq News – Nineveh
On Tuesday, Nineveh’s Mass Graves Committee appealed for urgent international assistance to help excavation teams reach the depths of al-Khafsa, a vast sinkhole south of Mosul in Nineveh province, where ISIS carried out mass executions in 2016.
Committee Head Judge Mohammed Salahuddin al-Badrani told Shafaq News that the first meters of digging had already uncovered human remains. “What has been found around the site and at its entrances is horrifying, let alone what may emerge from its depths,” he noted.
Al-Badrani described the excavation as a humanitarian mission requiring cooperation from international and regional organizations and civil society groups to deliver justice for families who have waited years to learn the fate of their missing relatives, stressing that the effort could take more than two years without substantial outside support.
Known locally as al-Khafsa, the natural sinkhole lies about 20 kilometers south of Mosul, once ISIS’s declared capital in Nineveh. During the group’s rule from 2014 to 2017, it became one of their most infamous killing grounds. Estimates put the number of people thrown into the pit at around 4,000, though some accounts suggest the toll is far higher.
Excavations began on August 17 under the supervision of Nineveh Governor Abdul Qadir al-Dakhil and Appeals Court Chief Judge Raed al-Muslih, with officials and forensic specialists in attendance.
Earlier today, dozens of families in Mosul’s Wadi Hajar district staged a protest demanding answers on the fate of more than 600 men who disappeared during ISIS’s occupation. Many of the missing were policemen and civilians who never returned after the city’s liberation, leaving their relatives in limbo nearly a decade later.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) estimates between 250,000 and 1 million people remain missing due to "conflict, human rights violations and atrocities," which includes the ISIS period, among others.
