Kurds find mass grave of Islamic State victims in Iraq

Kurdish forces in northern Iraq find a mass grave containing the bodies of at least 11 Iraqi policemen presumed killed by jihadists, a peshmerga security official says.

“A mass grave was discovered on Thursday in the Duraji area” where there are many caves once used as hideouts by the Islamic State group (IS), the official says.

Duraji is in Salaheddin province in an area disputed between the federal government and the autonomous region of Kurdistan.

“The bodies of at least 11 Iraqi police officers have been taken from the grave so far” since the operation began in the morning, says the official. “We think they had been prisoners of IS in 2018,” the official says, adding that both peshmerga and Iraqi federal police were taking part in the search.

He says the mass grave was discovered as a result of “information obtained from IS hideouts in the region where the jihadists imprisoned members of the Iraqi forces they captured.”