Iraq starts work on IS mass grave thought to hold thousands of bodies

Iraqi authorities have begun excavating the site of a mass grave believed to contain thousands of victims of Islamic State (IS) near Mosul city, the project’s director said on Sunday.

The first phase, launched on August 10, includes surface-level excavation at the Khasfa site, Ahmed al-Assadi said.

A journalist visiting the site in northern Iraq on Sunday said the team unearthed human skulls buried in the sand.

Khasfa is near Mosul, where IS established the capital of their self-declared “caliphate” before being defeated in Iraq in late 2017.

Assadi said that there were no precise figures for the numbers of victims buried there – one of dozens of mass graves IS left behind in Iraq – but a UN report from 2018 said Khasfa was likely the country’s largest.

Official estimates put the number of bodies buried at the site at 4,000, with the possibility of thousands more.