16 remains recovered from three mass graves near Saqlawiyah

ANBAR — Authorities in Anbar governorate announced Sunday that 16 sets of remains had been recovered from three mass graves discovered in the Akaz Plain area near Saqlawiyah, while investigations continue at seven additional suspected sites — and officials pushed back against social media reports claiming 1,500 remains had been found.

Moaid al-Dulaimi, media spokesperson for Anbar’s local government, said technical teams from the Mass Graves and Missing Persons Protection Department began excavation work at the site on May 6 under Iraq’s Mass Graves Protection Law. Ten remains were found in the first grave, five in the second and one in the third, with search operations still ongoing at four additional graves. Ten locations have been identified within the area in total.

Dulaimi said “some media outlets manipulated the emotions of families of the missing in Saqlawiyah before the technical teams completed their work and issued the final report,” rejecting the 1,500 figure as inaccurate. The identity of the remains and the period in which victims were killed have not yet been determined, pending DNA testing.

Anbar Governor Omar Mishaan Dabbous visited the site Sunday and stressed the need to handle the file “from both humanitarian and national perspectives with the highest levels of responsibility, accuracy and transparency.” He said he would personally follow the results of DNA examinations to identify victims.

Iraq has documented 314 mass grave sites nationwide, including 160 linked to the Baath era and 154 attributed to Islamic State. A report by the Strategic Center for Human Rights in Iraq estimated that up to 400,000 people may be buried in mass graves across the country, with between 250,000 and 1 million people still missing. Some of the largest excavation operations have focused on ISIS-era graves in Mosul, Sinjar and Tal Afar, where Yazidis, Turkmen, security personnel and civilians were killed between 2014 and 2017. The Al-Khasfa sinkhole south of Mosul alone may contain between 15,000 and 20,000 remains, according to officials.