ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraqi authorities on Tuesday held a funeral ceremony for the remains of 47 victims killed by the Islamic State (ISIS) and recovered from a mass grave south of Mosul, after forensic examinations confirmed their identities nearly a decade after the militant group carried mass atrocities across Iraq and Syria, killing thousands of people, including Yazidis.
The Islamic State (ISIS) seized Mosul in June 2014 and controlled large parts of northern and western Iraq until its territorial defeat in the country in late 2017. Its atrocities left hundreds of mass graves, many of which remain under investigation as authorities continue working to identify victims and return their remains to their families.
Mass graves containing victims of ISIS atrocities have continued to be discovered across Nineveh, particularly in the Yazidi heartland of Shingal (Sinjar), where the militants carried out a genocide against the religious minority in August 2014. By September 2025, authorities had identified 93 Yazidi mass graves in Shingal, of which 68 had been exhumed, in addition to dozens of individual graves. The victims included men, elderly people and women, with one mass grave in Solagh containing the remains of more than 70 women, including pregnant women.
Nineveh Governor Abdul Qadir al-Dakhil and the head of the province's Court of Appeal, Judge Raed Hamid al-Muslih, oversaw the Tuesday ceremony, attended by local officials, security personnel and the victims' families, according to a statement from the governorate.
Iraq's Department of Forensic Medicine announced that DNA testing had successfully identified the 47 victims recovered from the mass grave in Hammam al-Alil, south of Mosul. The remains were scheduled to be handed over to their families on Tuesday for burial, in coordination with the Martyrs Foundation.
The victims included members of the security forces, religious figures and civilians abducted by ISIS from Hammam al-Alil, al-Shura and al-Qayyarah, Nineveh Deputy Governor Ghazwan al-Daoudi told the state-run Iraqi News Agency (INA) on Monday. He put the number of remains at 48, one more than the 47 identified by the Department of Forensic Medicine.
Hammam al-Alil, approximately 30 kilometers south of Mosul, was the site of mass executions during ISIS's occupation of the area. In November 2016, Iraqi forces discovered a mass grave believed to contain hundreds of victims, many of them former police officers executed by the militants.
Al-Daoudi called on the Iraqi government and the Martyrs Foundation to provide compensation and other entitlements to the victims' families, saying they had yet to receive their rights despite years of waiting.
Separately, Nineveh Provincial Council member Nadia Nasser al-Jubouri announced the approval of a proposal to construct a memorial honoring victims from southern Mosul.
