Iraq: Analysis of aerial images may lead to new mass grave sites

With nine years into the Speicher Massacre committed by Daesh terrorists in 2014, the Mass Grave Department—an affiliate of the Martyrs Foundation—still expects to find new mass grave sites.

In a statement followed by Shia Waves Agency, the head of the department, Ziyad Karim, explained that “specilaized teams have opened 17 sites, from which they have collected 1,235 remains and handed them over to the forensic medicine department, noting that the number of missing in the Speicher Massacre is still large, amounting to 1,900 martyrs.”

Karim expressed his hope that “there is a glimmer of hope in finding two sites based on the analysis of aerial images, pointing out that the issue will be clear in the coming months, and if the results are positive, we will reach new sites.”

The massacre occurred two days after the fall of Mosul in the hands of Daesh terrorists in 2014, and more than 2,000 martyrs were killed, after students in the Air Force Cadets and members of the army were taken from Speicher Air Base in Salahuddin Governorate to the Presidential Palaces in Tikrit city, where the terrorists executed them by firing squad and buried some of them alive.