ERBL, Kurdistan Region – The Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights (IHCHR) says 4,536 bodies have been exhumed from mass graves in Nineveh province since the defeat of ISIS.

Fadhil al-Gharawi, a member of the commission’s council, said ISIS committed several mass executions and blew up residential areas during its rule and lead up to its defeat.

“Gharawi added the civil defense team in the Nineveh province exhumed more than 2,665 identified corpses of civilians throughout the province,” a commission statement said Wednesday.

A further 1,871 unidentified individuals have been exhumed.

Of the identified bodies, some 851 are children. Around 345 were located in West Mosul. 

Al-Gharawi called on the government to bolster efforts to speed up the process of opening mass graves in Nineveh.

Last Monday, a mass grave in the village of Kasr Mihrab near Tal Afar was found to contain the remains of 18 Yezidis. 

Many such mass graves remain uninvestigated. Efforts to exhume bodies were disrupted by the events of October 16, 2017, when Iraqi forces and Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitias took over several of the disputed territories. 

The ensuing instability has obstructed the process.