CIGE calls for funding to complete Duhok’s mass graves file

Shafaq News- Duhok

A delegation from the Committee for Investigation and Gathering Evidence (CIGE) recently visited Baghdad with a specialized judge to follow up on the case of hundreds of victims whose remains have yet to be identified, an official from the committee told Shafaq News on Friday.

Colonel Shaker Mahmoud Mirani, a member of CIGE in Duhok, vowed that the committee is continuing its efforts with the relevant authorities to complete the mass graves file in Sinjar and the Nineveh Plains, adding that the last mass grave to be excavated was in the Mushairifa area on the outskirts of Mosul, where about 15 sets of human remains were recovered. The remains were initially believed to belong only to Kurdish Peshmerga forces, but were later found to belong to Yazidi victims.

"More than 500 sets of remains have been exhumed from mass graves since 2017 and remain unidentified due to the lack of sufficient blood samples from victims' relatives to conduct DNA matching and return the remains to their families," he noted, clarifying that around 30 mass graves in Sinjar are still awaiting excavation, because such operations require significant financial allocations and logistical resources. He urged the Council of Representatives to support this file and provide the necessary budget to accelerate the operations.

Mirani also said that the remains exhumed in 2016 from a mass grave near the Sharaf al-Din Shrine will be sent to the Forensic Medicine Department in Baghdad for DNA testing in preparation for identifying the victims and handing the remains over to their families.

By early August 2025, teams had exhumed 68 of 162 known burial sites in the district, confirming 293 identities, while more than 450 remains remain unidentified. Nearly 2,900 Yazidis are still listed as missing.

Official figures show that 762 Yazidi remains have been unearthed in Sinjar this year, with 298 identified through DNA analysis and returned to their families.