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BAGHDAD: Iraqi authorities have begun excavating the site of a mass grave believed to contain thousands of victims of the Daesh group near Mosul city, the project’s director said on Sunday.

The first phase, which was launched on August 10, includes surface-level excavation at the Khasfa site, director Ahmed Assadi said.

An AFP correspondent visiting the site in northern Iraq on Sunday said the team unearthed human skulls buried in the sand.

Khasfa is located near Mosul, where Daesh had established the capital of their self-declared “caliphate” before being defeated in Iraq in late 2017.

Assadi said that there were no precise figures for the numbers of victims buried there – one of dozens of mass graves Daesh left behind in Iraq – but a UN report from 2018 said Khasfa was likely the country’s largest.

Official estimates put the number of bodies buried at the site at least 4,000, with the possibility of thousands more.

The project director said the victims buried there include “soldiers executed by Daesh,” members of the Yazidi minority and residents of Mosul.

Exhuming the bodies from Khasfa is particularly difficult, Assadi said, as underground sulfur water makes the earth very porous.

The water may have also eroded the human remains, complicating DNA identification of victims, he added.

Assadi said further studies will be required before his team can dig deeper and exhume bodies at the site – a sinkhole about 150-meter (nearly 500-foot) deep and 110-meter wide.

Iraqi authorities said it was the site of “one of the worst massacres” committed by Daesh militants, executing 280 in a single day in 2016, many of them interior ministry employees.

In a lightning advance that began in 2014, Daesh had seized large swathes Iraq and neighboring Syria, enforcing a strict interpretation of Islamic law and committing widespread abuses.

The United Nations estimates the militants left behind more than 200 mass graves which might contain as many as 12,000 bodies.

In addition to Daesh-era mass graves, Iraqi authorities continue to unearth such sites dating to the rule of Saddam Hussein, who was toppled in a US-led invasion in 2003.

DAMASCUS: Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa has said the battle to unify his country after years of civil war “should not be with blood,” rejecting any partition and accusing Israel of meddling in the south.
His remarks, released by state TV on Sunday, came as hundreds demonstrated in south Syria’s Sweida province, denouncing sectarian violence last month and calling for the right to self-determination for the Druze-majority province.
“We still have another battle ahead of us to unify Syria, and it should not be with blood and military force... it should be through some kind of understanding because Syria is tired of war,” Sharaa said during a dialogue session involving notables from the northwest province of Idlib and other senior officials.
“I do not see Syria as at risk of division. Some people desire a process of dividing Syria and trying to establish cantons... this matter is impossible,” he said according to a recording of the meeting, distributed overnight by state media.
“Some parties seek to gain power through regional power, Israel or others. This is also extremely difficult and cannot be implemented,” he said.
At the protest in Sweida, some demonstrators waved the Israeli flag and called for self-determination for the region.
A week of bloodshed in Sweida began on July 13 with clashes between Druze fighters and Sunni Bedouin, but rapidly escalated, drawing in government forces, with Israel also carrying out strikes.
Syrian authorities have said their forces intervened to stop the clashes, but witnesses, Druze factions and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights have accused them of siding with the Bedouin and committing abuses against the Druze, including summary executions.
Sharaa said that Sweida “witnessed many violations from all sides... some members of the security forces and army in Syria also carried out some violations.”
The state is required “to hold all perpetrators of violations to account,” whatever their affiliation, he added.
“Israel is intervening directly in Sweida, seeking to implement policies aimed at weakening the state in general or finding excuses to interfere in ongoing policies in the southern region,” Sharaa said.
Israel, which has its own Druze community, has said it has acted to defend the minority group as well as enforce its demands for the demilitarization of southern Syria.
Syria’s new authorities are also in talks with a semi-autonomous Kurdish administration that runs swathes of the country’s north and northeast and has called for decentralization, which Damascus has rejected.
Implementation of a March 10 deal on integrating the Kurds’ semi-autonomous civil and military institutions into the state has been held up by differences between the parties.
“We are now discussing the mechanisms for implementation” of the deal, Sharaa said.