Iraq
Head of the Iraqi Martyrs Foundation Abdul-Ilah al-Naeli speaking to Rudaw on September 19, 2025. Photo: Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - More than 220 mass graves have been opened across Iraq, out of a total of 250 identified sites, the head of the state-affiliated Martyrs Foundation said on Thursday.
Only a few graves remain unopened due to limited logistical capacity of the mass graves team, Abdul-Ilah al-Naeli told Rudaw’s Ziyad Ismail. He said the foundation is coordinating with the Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs on “opening mass graves, handing over remains, and the issue of forensic medicine and DNA analysis.”
A delegation from the foundation will visit Erbil to coordinate further with the Kurdistan Region, including “providing us with a database of martyrs and Anfal victims” after the recent discovery of “a group of mass graves in central and southern regions as well as in the western region, where remains of many Kurdish martyrs were found,” Naeli said.
The victims in those graves were some of the more than 182,000 Kurds killed by Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath regime during its eight-phase Anfal military offensive across the Kurdistan Region nearly four decades ago. Dozens of mass graves remain undiscovered or unexcavated from this time.
In December, satellite imagery revealed several suspected mass graves in Muthanna province believed to be the burial site of around 150 Kurdish women and children who were executed during the Anfal campaign.
Iraq is also exhuming victims of the Islamic State (ISIS).
Naeli said the foundation’s Nineveh office “has special follow-up for Yazidi community martyrs’ cases and special attention to them” and that “their procedures are greatly expedited.”
In August, authorities in Nineveh launched the first phase of exhuming Khasfa pit, one of the largest mass graves of ISIS victims, located about 20 kilometers south of Mosul. The natural sinkhole was used by ISIS as an open grave and is believed to contain the remains of around 4,000 people.
ISIS swept through vast swathes of Iraq in 2014, declaring a so-called caliphate after taking control of several cities, including Mosul. The jihadist group was declared territorially defeated in 2017. During its rule, it committed atrocities including genocide, sexual slavery, and massacres.
Human Rights Watch estimates that the remains of around 400,000 people are buried in mass graves across Iraq.
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