Mass grave of Kurdish victims excavated in Samawah’s Al-Sheikhiyah area

SAMAWAH – A mass grave containing the remains of approximately 90 Kurdish victims, including women, children, and the elderly, has been uncovered in the Al-Sheikhiyah area of Al-Salman district in Muthanna Governorate’s capital, Samawah, according to a security source. The excavation, led by a joint committee, began three days ago and is expected to continue until September 3.

“We began clearing the site and its surroundings of war remnants and landmines three days ago,” the source told 964media. “After securing the area, we proceeded with the excavation to recover the victims’ remains, which will be transported to Baghdad for further examination.”

The mass grave, originally discovered in 2018, is being excavated by a team comprising the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Martyrs Foundation, the Forensic Medicine Department, the Ministry of Defense, the Criminal Evidence Department, Civil Defense, and the Iraqi Red Crescent.

“The victims, all of Kurdish ethnicity, were killed and buried in the Samawah desert,” the source said. “We believe there may be other undiscovered mass graves in the region.”

This discovery follows the unearthing of four mass graves in the same area in April, 2019, which contained the remains of dozens of Kurds believed to have been killed by forces of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein during the Anfal campaign—a brutal crackdown against the Kurdish population in the late 1980s. The victims, primarily women and children, are thought to have been executed between 1987 and 1988.

This January, the remains of 172 Anfal campaign victims were transferred from Baghdad to the Kurdistan Region for reburial at the Monument of the Martyrs in Chamchamal, Sulaymaniyah governorate. These victims, originally from the Khalkhalan and Agjalar areas, were uncovered in the Bab Sheikh area of the Samawah desert after heavy rains and flooding exposed their graves. They were later identified at Baghdad’s Forensic Medicine Department.

The Anfal campaign, carried out by Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1988, is one of the darkest chapters in Kurdish history, characterized by systematic violence, mass killings, and the use of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians. Beyond the estimated 50,000 to 100,000 deaths, approximately 182,000 Kurds went missing, their fate still unknown. Many were forcibly taken from their homes, transported to remote locations, and never heard from again, with their bodies believed to be buried in mass graves that remain undiscovered to this day. Entire villages were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of Kurds were displaced in an attempt to erase their presence from the region.

Named after the Quran’s Surah Al-Anfal, which refers to “the spoils of war,” the campaign’s title was used by the regime to falsely portray the Kurds, predominantly Sunni Muslims, as infidels, in an effort to gain broader support. This misuse of religious context was part of a broader strategy to justify the genocide under the guise of suppressing Kurdish resistance, which the regime viewed as a threat to Iraqi state security.