AKIPRESS.COM - More than 200 mass graves containing between 6,000 and 12,000 bodies have been found in Iraq from the time of the Islamic State group's three-year reign, U.N. investigators said Tuesday, ABC news reports.
The 202 graves verified by investigators dot northern Iraq and are a "legacy of ISIL's terror," according to a joint report by the U.N. mission to Iraq and the U.N. office for human rights. Findings from the gravesites can be used as evidence of the group's crimes, they said.
The graves date from 2014 to 2017 when the militant group, sometimes known by the acronym ISIL, ruled some of Iraq's largest cities and towns.
As the militants swept through Iraq and neighboring Syria, they killed captured members of the security forces en masse, expelled or killed minorities, and enslaved women from the Yazidi sect. The U.N. says the widespread violations could amount to genocide.