ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Local authorities from a southern Iraqi province began on Friday the exhumation of a mass grave containing Kurds believed to have been killed during the former Baathist regime’s deadly Anfal campaign.
“Most of them are women and children,” Muthanna Governor Ahmed Menfi told Kurdistan 24 regarding the work team's preliminary examinations.
They have so far exhumed “over 300 bodies,” Menfi said, adding that workers had also retrieved various accompanying documentation and that the results the forensic investigation will be announced in the near future.
He added that it could be the largest such site found in the desert of al-Salman, a southwestern district of Muthanna Province where the notorious Nigret Salman prison camp is located.
Between 1986 and 1989, during Iraq's war with Iran, the government of Saddam Hussein undertook a campaign of genocide against the Kurds to the north. Spearheaded by the infamous Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali," the operation saw the deaths of up to 182,000 ethnic Kurds.
Many were forcibly displaced to other parts of the country and held in specialized camps before being summarily executed and buried in large groups. Nigret Salman is one such site.