Islamic State left more than 200 mass graves in Iraq, the United Nations said Tuesday, the aftermath of the extremist group’s three-year occupation of the north of the country that could provide some of the first evidence of war crimes committed during their rule.
The Iraqi government has tried and executed dozens of Islamic State militants since the group retreated, but none for war crimes.
“The mass gravesites documented in our report are a testament to harrowing human loss, profound suffering and shocking cruelty,” said the U.N.’s representative in Iraq, Jan Kubis.
Exhuming the burial sites—containing up to 12,000 victims—is painstaking work for which Iraq is poorly equipped. After years of conflict, Iraq has one of the highest numbers of missing people in the world, but just 25 specialists trained in scientific exhumation techniques.
Digging up remains from sinkholes and other sites across northern and western Iraq, and piecing together bones for families to identify, has left excavation team members with skin diseases while Iraq’s morgues have struggled to accommodate the number of corpses.
But the work is critical for families that have been deprived of a sense of closure after relatives went missing under Islamic State’s rule.
“The longer the mass graves are not excavated, the more we suffer. We want to know where our missing relatives are,” said Samir Faris, a member of Sinjar’s Yazidi community who says Islamic State killed 24 of his family members. He believes 14 are buried in a mass grave. “I want this pain to end. I wish the government would dig up the grave and tell us what is in it,” he said.
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Beginning in 2014, Islamic State conquered around one-third of Iraq and swaths of neighboring Syria. The same year, the first Islamic State mass grave in Iraq was discovered, containing the remains of 14 Yazidi civilians, a community that was singled out for persecution by the extremists.
Over the three years, before their defeat from a U.S.-backed coalition of Iraqi forces, Islamic State executed men, women and children. The U.N. has documented a total of 202 mass graves in parts of the country that were under control of Islamic State.
“ISIL’s horrific crimes in Iraq have left the headlines but the trauma of the victims’ families endures, with thousands of women, men and children still unaccounted for,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said in the new report, using an acronym for the extremist group.
Nearly half of the mass graves are in Nineveh governorate—where Islamic State is still active—most of them around Mosul, the largest city under Islamic State control until 2017. The U.N. believes the biggest grave, in the Khasfa sinkhole outside Mosul, could contain several thousand victims.
In 2017, the Iraqi government declared victory over Islamic State, which was evicted from its main strongholds in both Iraq and Syria. The group continues to wage an insurgency from remote hideouts, but the work of exhuming mass graves marks an effort for Iraq to move beyond its recent troubled history.
So far, only 28 of the gravesites in Iraq have been excavated, unearthing the remains of 1,258 bodies.
In both Syria and Iraq—where Islamic State ruled swaths of land until last year—local authorities are trying to unearth mass graves, identify victims and advance reconstruction.
“The government should pay more attention to mass grave excavation and release more funds for it,” Hassan Karim al-Kaabi, first deputy speaker of Iraq’s parliament said in a meeting with officials Monday.
But the daunting challenges go beyond staffing and technical training.
Some mass graves are located in areas where Islamic State still operates, such as Anbar and Salah al-Din governorates. Some of the sites may be littered with explosive remnants of war. The work is, however, considered a critical part of Iraqi efforts to move beyond the aftermath of a painful three-year period under Islamic State.
“Determining the circumstances surrounding the significant loss of life will be an important step in the mourning process for families and their journey to secure their rights to truth and justice,” said Mr. Kubis.
—Ghassan Adnan contributed to this article.
Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com
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