IS buried thousands in 72 mass graves, AP finds

HARDAN, Iraq (AP) — Surrounded by smoke and flames, the sound of gunshots echoing around him, the young man crouched in the creek for hours, listening to the men in his family die.

On the other side of the mountain, another survivor peered through binoculars as the handcuffed men of neighboring villages were shot and then buried by a waiting bulldozer. For six days he watched as the extremists filled one grave after another with his friends and relatives.

Between them, the two scenes of horror on Sinjar mountain contain six burial sites and the bodies of more than 100 people, just a small fraction of the mass graves Islamic State extremists have scattered across Iraq and Syria.

This image released by the the Mass Graves Directorate of the Kurdish Regional Government shows a human skull in a mass grave containing Yazidis killed by Islamic State militants in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq in May, 2015. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (Kurdish Mass Graves Directorate via AP)

In exclusive interviews, photos and research, The Associated Press has documented and mapped 72 of the mass graves, the most comprehensive survey so far, with many more expected to be uncovered as the Islamic State group's territory shrinks. In Syria, AP has obtained locations for 17 mass graves, including one with the bodies of hundreds of members of a single tribe all but exterminated when IS extremists took over their region. For at least 16 of the Iraqi graves, most in territory too dangerous to excavate, officials do not even guess the number of dead. In others, the estimates are based on memories of traumatized survivors, Islamic State propaganda and what can be gleaned from a cursory look at the earth.

Still, even the known numbers of victims buried are staggering — from 5,200 to more than 15,000.

Sinjar mountain is dotted with mass graves, some in territory clawed back from IS after the group's onslaught against the Yazidi minority in August 2014; others in the deadly no man's land that has yet to be secured.

The bodies of Talal Murat's father, uncles and cousins lie beneath the rubble of the family farm, awaiting a time when it is safe for surviving relatives to return to the place where the men were gunned down. On Sinjar's other flank, Rasho Qassim drives daily past the graves holding the bodies of his two sons. The road is in territory long since seized back, but the five sites are untouched, roped off and awaiting the money or the political will for excavation, as the evidence they contain is scoured away by the wind and baked by the sun.

"We want to take them out of here. There are only bones left. But they said 'No, they have to stay there, a committee will come and exhume them later,'" said Qassim, standing at the edge of the flimsy fence surrounding one site, where his two sons are buried. "It has been two years but nobody has come."

IS made no attempt to hide its atrocities. In fact it boasted of them. But proving what United Nations officials and others have described as an ongoing genocide — and prosecuting those behind it — will be complicated as the graves deteriorate.

"We see clear evidence of the intent to destroy the Yazidi people," said Naomi Kikoler, who recently visited the region for the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. "There's been virtually no effort to systematically document the crimes perpetrated, to preserve the evidence, and to ensure that mass graves are identified and protected."

Following the release of the AP research, the State Department noted that it is providing assistance to Iraqi authorities for the investigation of mass graves.

"Sadly, we anticipate that additional mass graves will be discovered as additional lands are liberated from Da'esh," State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

Then there are the graves still out of reach. The Islamic State group's atrocities extend well outside the Yazidi region in northern Iraq.

Satellites offer the clearest look at massacres such as the one at Badoush Prison in June 2014 that left 600 male inmates dead. A patch of scraped earth and tire tracks show the likely killing site, according to exclusive photos obtained by the imagery intelligence firm AllSource Analysis.

Of the 72 mass graves documented by AP, the smallest contains three bodies; the largest is believed to hold thousands, but no one knows for sure.

___

ALL THEY COULD DO WAS WATCH THE SLAUGHTER

On the northern flank of Sinjar mountain, five grave sites ring a desert crossroads. It is here that the young men of Hardan village are buried, under thistles and piles of cracked earth. They were killed in the bloody IS offensive of August 2014.

Through his binoculars, Arkan Qassem watched it all. His village, Gurmiz, is just up the slope from Hardan, giving a clear view over the plain below. When the jihadis swept over the area, everyone in Gurmiz fled up the mountaintop for refuge. Then Arkan and nine other men returned to their village with light weapons to try to defend their homes.

Instead, all they could do was watch the slaughter below. Arkan witnessed the militants set up checkpoints, preventing residents from leaving. Women and children were taken away.

Then the killings began. The first night, Arkan saw the militants line up a group of handcuffed men in the headlights of a bulldozer at an intersection, less than a kilometer (half mile) down the slope from Gurmiz. They gunned the men down, then the bulldozer plowed the earth over their bodies.

Over six days, Arkan and his comrades watched helplessly as the fighters brought out three more groups of men — several dozen each, usually with hands bound — to the crossroads and killed them. He didn't always see what they did with the bodies. One time, he saw them lighting a bonfire, but he couldn't see why.

Finally, the jihadis brought in artillery and prepared to make an assault on Gurmiz. Arkan and his comrades fled up the mountain to where their families had taken refuge.

Now, since IS fighters were driven out of the area, the 32-year-old has returned to his home. But he's haunted by the site. As documented by the aid group Yazda, which has mapped the Sinjar sites, the graves are in a rough pentagon flanking the crossroads, largely unprotected. Around one of them is a mesh fence and a wind-battered sign. As Arkan spoke at the site, a shepherd herded his flock nearby.

"I have lots of people I know there. Mostly friends and neighbors," he said. "It's very difficult to look at them every day."

___

"THIS BODY IS WEARING MY FATHER'S CLOTHES"

As IS fighters swarmed into the Sinjar area in early August 2014, Talal fled his town along with his father, mother, four sisters and younger brother. They and dozens of other men, women and children from his extended clan converged on an uncle's farm outside the town of Tel Azer. They prayed it was remote enough to escape the killings that were already engulfing so many Yazidis.

It wasn't.

The jihadis fired at the house from a distance. Then they rolled up in their vehicles and shot one man in the head as they stood in the yard. They surrounded the farmhouse, ordered everyone outside and demanded the impossible: Convert.

The Yazidi faith, one of the region's oldest, has elements of Christianity and Islam but is distinct. Yazidis worship the Peacock Angel, fallen and forgiven by God under their tradition, and their shrines feature carved images of the birds and references to the sun. Muslim extremists condemned them as "devil worshippers" and over the centuries have subjected them to multiple massacres — 72, by the Yazidis' count.

In its own propaganda, the Islamic State group made clear its intention to wipe out the Yazidi community. In an issue of its online English-language magazine Dabiq, it scolded Muslims for allowing the Yazidis to continue existing, calling their ancient religion a form of paganism. It quoted Quranic verses to justify killing the Yazidis unless they become Muslim.

Thwarted in their halfhearted attempt at conversions, the fighters separated about 35 teenage girls and young women from the rest, crammed them into a few cars and drove away. The militants herded the older women and young children into the farmhouse and locked the door.

Then they lined the men and teenaged boys against the wall of the stables — around 40 in all, including Talal.

There were too many of them, too bunched up, to efficiently mow down, so the fighters then ordered them to lie on the ground in a row, Talal said. That was when his uncle told him to make a run for it. Talal bolted into his uncle's hayfield, as did several other men. The militants fired at them, and the bullets ignited the hay, dry from the summer sun. The fire covered Talal's escape, and he took shelter in a nearby creek.

There he hid, listening as the gunmen shot his family to death. He eventually fled toward the mountain, joined by three others who had survived the massacre. Four out of 40.

Back at the farm, the gunmen eventually left and the women and children emerged, looking around with growing horror.

Nouri Murat, Talal's mother, found her husband. His body was untouched, but his head was shattered. Her daughters, she said, were confused at first. "This is strange, this body is wearing my father's clothes," one of them said. As Nouri frantically searched around the property for any surviving menfolk, her 9-year-old daughter Rukhan lay down beside her father's corpse.

Finally, other women persuaded the family to head to the mountain before the Islamic State fighters returned.

As they began the long walk north, Nouri noticed Rukhan's bloody fist. Fearing her daughter was wounded, she pried open the girl's clenched fingers. Inside were a handful of her father's teeth.

___

"THEY DON'T EVEN TRY TO HIDE THEIR CRIMES"

Nearly every area freed from IS control has unmasked new mass graves, like one found by the sports stadium in the Iraqi city of Ramadi. Many of the graves themselves are easy enough to find, most covered with just a thin coating of earth.

"They don't even try to hide their crimes," said Sirwan Jalal, the director of Iraqi Kurdistan's agency in charge of mass graves. "They are beheading them, shooting them, running them over in cars, all kinds of killing techniques, and they don't even try to hide it."

No one outside IS has seen the Iraqi ravine where hundreds of Shiite prison inmates were killed point blank and then torched. Satellite images of scraped dirt along the river point to its location, according to Steve Wood of AllSource. His analysts triangulated survivors' accounts and began to systematically search the desert according to their descriptions of that day, June 10, 2014.

The inmates were separated out by religion, and Shiites were loaded onto trucks, driven for a few kilometers (miles) and forced to line up and count off, according to accounts by 15 survivors gathered by Human Rights Watch. Then they knelt along the edge of the crescent-shaped ravine, according to a report cited by AllSource.

"I was number 43. I heard them say '615,' and then one ISIS guy said, 'We're going to eat well tonight.' A man behind us asked, 'Are you ready?' Another person answered 'Yes,' and began shooting at us with a machine-gun. Then they all started to shoot us from behind, going down the row," according to the Human Rights Watch account of a survivor identified only as A.S.

The men survived by pretending to be dead.

Using their accounts and others, AllSource examined an image from July 17, 2014, that appeared to show the location as described, between a main road and the railway outside Mosul. The bodies are believed to be packed tightly together, side by side in a space approximately the length of two football fields end to end, in what the AllSource analysis described as a "sardine trench." Tire tracks lead to and from the site.

"There's actually earth that has been pushed over and actually moved to cover parts of the ravine. As we look across the entire ravine we only see that in this one location," said Wood. "Ultimately there are many, many more sites across Iraq and Syria that have yet to be either forensically exhumed or be able to be detailed and there's quite a bit more research that needs to take place."

The key, Wood said, is having photos to indicate a grave's location taken soon after its creation.

Justice has been done in at least one IS mass killing — that of about 1,700 Iraqi soldiers who were forced to lie face-down in a ditch and then machine-gunned at Camp Speicher. On Aug. 21, 36 men convicted in those killings were hanged at Iraq's Nasiriyah prison.

But justice is likely to be elusive in areas still firmly under IS control, even though the extremists have filmed themselves committing the atrocities. That's the case for a deep natural sinkhole outside Mosul that is now a pit of corpses. In Syria's Raqqa province, thousands of bodies are believed to have been thrown into the giant al-Houta crevasse.

Conditions in much of Syria remain a mystery. Activists believe there are hundreds of mass graves in IS-controlled areas that can only be explored when fighting stops. By that time, they fear any effort to document the massacres, exhume and identify the remains will become infinitely more complicated.

Working behind IS lines, local residents have informally documented some mass graves, even partially digging some up. Some of the worst have been found in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour. There, 400 members of the Shueitat tribe were found in one grave, just some of the up to 1,000 members of the tribe believed to have been massacred by IS when the militants took over the area, said Ziad Awad, the editor of an online publication on Deir el-Zour called The Eye of the City who is trying to document the graves.

In Raqqa province, the bodies of 160 Syrian soldiers, killed when IS overran their base, were found in seven large pits.

So far, at least 17 mass graves are known, though largely unreachable, in a list put together from AP interviews with activists from Syrian provinces still under IS rule as well as fighters and residents in former IS strongholds.

"This is a drop in an ocean of mass graves expected to be discovered in the future in Syria," said Awad.

___

Butler reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Balint Szlanko and Salar Salim in Irbil, Iraq; Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad; Zeina Karam and Philip Issa in Beirut, and Maya Alleruzzo in Cairo contributed to this story.

___

Read previous stories in AP's occasional series "Islamic State: A Savage Legacy" at www.ap.org/explore/a-savage-legacy/

FILE - In this April 3, 2015, file photo, an Iraqi man prays for his slain relative at the site of a mass grave believed to contain the bodies of Iraqi soldiers killed by Islamic State group militants when they overran Camp Speicher military base in Tikrit, Iraq, in June 2014. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File)

In this Wednesday, May 18, 2016 photo, a relative shows a phone picture of Murat Mahmoud during an interview with the Associated Press at Kankhe Camp for the internally displaced in Dahuk, northern Iraq. Murat was killed on Aug. 3, 2014 by Islamic State militants in a massacre of Yazidis and his body is among 40 believed in a mass grave at a farm on Sinjar Mountain. His daughter is still held by the militants. An analysis by The AP has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

FILE - In this June 8, 2016 file photo, Sgt. Ahmed Abdelaziz of Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces shows an Islamic State video of his brother's death at the hands of the IS at a battle position on the southern edge of Fallujah, Iraq. Saad Abdelaziz was killed in June 2014 at Camp Speicher when the militants overran his base. More than 1,000 of Saad's comrades killed in the massacre ended up in a mass grave nearby. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File)

This image posted online by Islamic State militants on June 14, 2014 shows Iraqi cadets captured by IS moments before they were killed in Tikrit, Iraq. Their bodies are believed to be in one of the many mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 such graves in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (Militant photo via AP)

In this May 17, 2016 photo, Sirwan Jalal, Director of Mass Graves for the Kurdish Regional Government, points to an image of the site of a mass grave during an interview with the Associated Press in Irbil, northern Iraq. An analysis by The AP has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

In this May 19, 2016 photo, the site where dozens of Yazidi men were killed in August 2014 is fenced off in Hardan, northern Iraq. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

FILE - In this Dec. 22, 2014, file photo, Kurdish Peshmerga forces inspect a site marked in Kurdish with a sign reading, "Kurdish mass grave,¿ in Hardan village in northern Iraq. A handful of Yazidis who fled this tiny northern Iraqi hamlet when Islamic State militants overran it in August 2014 have returned after Kurdish fighters drove out the extremists. (AP Photo/Dalton Bennett, File)

In this May 19, 2016 photo, Arkan Qassim, center, stands at the site where he witnessed the killing dozens of Yazidi men including two sons of Rasho Qassim, right, in August 2014 in Hardan, northern Iraq. Both survivors say they simply want the graves exhumed. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

This photo released by the the Mass Graves Directorate of the Kurdish Regional Government shows a skeleton exhumed from a mass grave containing Yazidis killed by Islamic State militants in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (Kurdish Mass Graves Directorate via AP)

In this May 19, 2016 photo, Arkan Qassim, center, looks at the site where he witnessed the killing dozens of Yazidi men in August 2014 in Hardan, northern Iraq. Rasho Qassim, right, lost two sons in the massacre. Both survivors say they simply want the graves exhumed. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

FILE - In this April 19, 2016 file photo, an Iraqi security forces forensic team works at the site of a mass grave believed to contain the bodies of Iraqi civilians, security forces and members of their families, including women and children, killed by Islamic State group militants at the stadium area in Ramadi, Iraq. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. Only a handful have been exhumed. (AP Photo, File)

This image released by the the Mass Graves Directorate of the Kurdish Regional Government shows a human jaw bone exhumed from a mass grave containing Yazidis killed by Islamic State militants in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq in 2015. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (Kurdish Mass Graves Directorate via AP)

In this May 18, 2016 photo, Nouri, right, and her son speak to the Associated Press at Kankhe Camp for the internally displaced in Dahuk, northern Iraq. Her husband, Murat Mahmoud, was killed on Aug. 3, 2014, by Islamic State militants in a massacre of Yazidis. Their bodies are buried in a mass grave at the farm where they died, the family said. An analysis by The AP has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)</s>In exclusive interviews, photos and research, AP has documented and mapped 72 mass graves in Iraq and Syria where the Islamic State (IS) has buried many of its victims and many more are expected to be uncovered as the group’s territory shrinks.

In Syria, AP has obtained locations for 17 mass graves, including one with the bodies of hundreds of members of a single tribe all but exterminated when IS extremists took over their region. For at least 16 of the Iraqi graves, officials do not even guess the number of dead. In others, the estimates are based on memories of traumatised survivors, IS propaganda and what can be gleaned from a cursory look at the earth. Still, even the known victims buried are staggering from 5,200 to more than 15,000.

Sinjar mountain is dotted with mass graves, some in territory clawed back from IS after the group’s onslaught against the Yazidi minority in August 2014.

Of the 72 mass graves documented by AP, the smallest contains three bodies; the largest is believed to hold thousands, but no one knows for sure. — AP</s>IS buried thousands in 72 mass graves – 5,200 to more than 15,000 people buried

HARDAN: Surrounded by smoke and flames, the sound of gunshots echoing around him, the young man crouched in the creek for hours, listening to the men in his family die. On the other side of the mountain, another survivor peered through binoculars as the handcuffed men of neighboring villages were shot and then buried by a waiting bulldozer. For six days he watched as the extremists filled one grave after another with his friends and relatives.

Between them, the two scenes of horror on Sinjar mountain contain six burial sites and the bodies of more than 100 people, just a small fraction of the mass graves Islamic State extremists have scattered across Iraq and Syria. In exclusive interviews, photos and research, The Associated Press has documented and mapped 72 of the mass graves, the most comprehensive survey so far, with many more expected to be uncovered as the Islamic State group’s territory shrinks.

In Syria, AP has obtained locations for 17 mass graves, including one with the bodies of hundreds of members of a single tribe all but exterminated when IS extremists took over their region. For at least 16 of the Iraqi graves, most in territory too dangerous to excavate, officials do not even guess the number of dead. In others, the estimates are based on memories of traumatized survivors, Islamic State propaganda and what can be gleaned from a cursory look at the earth. Still, even the known victims buried are staggering – from 5,200 to more than 15,000.

Sinjar mountain is dotted with mass graves, some in territory clawed back from IS after the group’s onslaught against the Yazidi minority in August 2014; others in the deadly no man’s land that has yet to be secured. The bodies of Talal Murat’s father, uncles and cousins lie beneath the rubble of the family farm, awaiting a time when it is safe for surviving relatives to return to the place where the men were gunned down. On Sinjar’s other flank, Rasho Qassim drives daily past the graves holding the bodies of his two sons.

The road is in territory long since seized back, but the five sites are untouched, roped off and awaiting the money or the political will for excavation, as the evidence they contain is scoured away by the wind and baked by the sun. “We want to take them out of here. There are only bones left. But they said ‘No, they have to stay there, a committee will come and exhume them later,'” said Qassim, standing at the edge of the flimsy fence surrounding one site, where his two sons are buried. “It has been two years but nobody has come.”

IS made no attempt to hide its atrocities. In fact it boasted of them. But proving what United Nations officials and others have described as an ongoing genocide – and prosecuting those behind it will be complicated as the graves deteriorate. “We see clear evidence of the intent to destroy the Yazidi people,” said Naomi Kikoler, who recently visited the region for the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. “There’s been virtually no effort to systematically document the crimes perpetrated, to preserve the evidence, and to ensure that mass graves are identified and protected.”

Then there are the graves still out of reach. The Islamic State group’s atrocities extend well outside the Yazidi region in northern Iraq. Satellites offer the clearest look at massacres such as the one at Badoush Prison in June 2014 that left 600 male inmates dead. A patch of scraped earth and tire tracks show the likely killing site, according to exclusive photos obtained by the imagery intelligence firm AllSource Analysis. Of the 72 mass graves documented by AP, the smallest contains three bodies; the largest is believed to hold thousands, but no one knows for sure.

Watch the slaughter

 On the northern flank of Sinjar mountain, five grave sites ring a desert crossroads. It is here that the young men of Hardan village are buried, under thistles and piles of cracked earth. They were killed in the bloody IS offensive of August 2014. Through his binoculars, Arkan Qassem watched it all. His village, Gurmiz, is just up the slope from Hardan, giving a clear view over the plain below. When the jihadis swept over the area, everyone in Gurmiz fled up the mountaintop for refuge. Then Arkan and nine other men returned to their village with light weapons to try to defend their homes.

Instead, all they could do was watch the slaughter below. Arkan witnessed the militants set up checkpoints, preventing residents from leaving. Women and children were taken away. Then the killings began. The first night, Arkan saw the militants line up a group of handcuffed men in the headlights of a bulldozer at an intersection, less than a kilometer (half mile) down the slope from Gurmiz. They gunned the men down, then the bulldozer plowed the earth over their bodies.

Over six days, Arkan and his comrades watched helplessly as the fighters brought out three more groups of men – several dozen each, usually with hands bound – to the crossroads and killed them. He didn’t always see what they did with the bodies. One time, he saw them lighting a bonfire, but he couldn’t see why. Finally, the jihadis brought in artillery and prepared to make an assault on Gurmiz. Arkan and his comrades fled up the mountain to where their families had taken refuge. Now, since IS fighters were driven out of the area, the 32-year-old has returned to his home.

But he’s haunted by the site. As documented by the aid group Yazda, which has mapped the Sinjar sites, the graves are in a rough pentagon flanking the crossroads, largely unprotected. Around one of them is a mesh fence and a wind-battered sign. As Arkan spoke at the site, a shepherd herded his flock nearby. “I have lots of people I know there. Mostly friends and neighbors,” he said. “It’s very difficult to look at them every day.”

‘My father’s clothes’

 As IS fighters swarmed into the Sinjar area in early August 2014, Talal fled his town along with his father, mother, four sisters and younger brother. They and dozens of other men, women and children from his extended clan converged on an uncle’s farm outside the town of Tel Azer. They prayed it was remote enough to escape the killings that were already engulfing so many Yazidis. It wasn’t. The jihadis fired at the house from a distance. Then they rolled up in their vehicles and shot one man in the head as they stood in the yard. They surrounded the farmhouse, ordered everyone outside and demanded the impossible: Convert.

The Yazidi faith, one of the region’s oldest, has elements of Christianity and Islam but is distinct. Yazidis worship the Peacock Angel, fallen and forgiven by God under their tradition, and their shrines feature carved images of the birds and references to the sun. Muslim extremists condemned them as “devil worshippers” and over the centuries have subjected them to multiple massacres – 72, by the Yazidis’ count.

In its own propaganda, the Islamic State group made clear its intention to wipe out the Yazidi community. In an issue of its online English-language magazine Dabiq, it scolded Muslims for allowing the Yazidis to continue existing, calling their ancient religion a form of paganism. It quoted Quranic verses to justify killing the Yazidis unless they become Muslim. Thwarted in their halfhearted attempt at conversions, the fighters separated about 35 teenage girls and young women from the rest, crammed them into a few cars and drove away. The militants herded the older women and young children into the farmhouse and locked the door. Then they lined the men and teenaged boys against the wall of the stables – around 40 in all, including Talal.

There were too many of them, too bunched up, to efficiently mow down, so the fighters then ordered them to lie on the ground in a row, Talal said. That was when his uncle told him to make a run for it. Talal bolted into his uncle’s hayfield, as did several other men. The militants fired at them, and the bullets ignited the hay, dry from the summer sun. The fire covered Talal’s escape, and he took shelter in a nearby creek. There he hid, listening as the gunmen shot his family to death. He eventually fled toward the mountain, joined by three others who had survived the massacre. Four out of 40. Back at the farm, the gunmen eventually left and the women and children emerged, looking around with growing horror.

Nouri Murat, Talal’s mother, found her husband. His body was untouched, but his head was shattered. Her daughters, she said, were confused at first. “This is strange, this body is wearing my father’s clothes,” one of them said. As Nouri frantically searched around the property for any surviving menfolk, her 9-year-old daughter Rukhan lay down beside her father’s corpse. Finally, other women persuaded the family to head to the mountain before the Islamic State fighters returned. As they began the long walk north, Nouri noticed Rukhan’s bloody fist. Fearing her daughter was wounded, she pried open the girl’s clenched fingers. Inside were a handful of her father’s teeth.

They don’t hide their crimes

 Nearly every area freed from IS control has unmasked new mass graves, like one found by the sports stadium in the Iraqi city of Ramadi. Many of the graves themselves are easy enough to find, most covered with just a thin coating of earth. “They don’t even try to hide their crimes,” said Sirwan Jalal, the director of Iraqi Kurdistan’s agency in charge of mass graves. “They are beheading them, shooting them, running them over in cars, all kinds of killing techniques, and they don’t even try to hide it.” No one outside IS has seen the Iraqi ravine where hundreds of Shiite prison inmates were killed point blank and then torched. Satellite images of scraped dirt along the river point to its location, according to Steve Wood of AllSource.

His analysts triangulated survivors’ accounts and began to systematically search the desert according to their descriptions of that day, June 10, 2014. The inmates were separated out by religion, and Shiites were loaded onto trucks, driven for a few kilometers and forced to line up and count off, according to accounts by 15 survivors gathered by Human Rights Watch. Then they knelt along the edge of the crescent-shaped ravine, according to a report cited by AllSource. “I was number 43. I heard them say ‘615,’ and then one ISIS guy said, ‘We’re going to eat well tonight.’

A man behind us asked, ‘Are you ready?’ Another person answered ‘Yes,’ and began shooting at us with a machine-gun. Then they all started to shoot us from behind, going down the row,” according to the Human Rights Watch account of a survivor identified only as AS. The men survived by pretending to be dead. Using their accounts and others, AllSource examined an image from July 17, 2014, that appeared to show the location as described, between a main road and the railway outside Mosul. The bodies are believed to be packed tightly together, side by side in a space approximately the length of two football fields end to end, in what the AllSource analysis described as a “sardine trench.”

Tire tracks lead to and from the site. “There’s actually earth that has been pushed over and actually moved to cover parts of the ravine. As we look across the entire ravine we only see that in this one location,” said Wood. “Ultimately there are many, many more sites across Iraq and Syria that have yet to be either forensically exhumed or be able to be detailed and there’s quite a bit more research that needs to take place.”

The key, Wood said, is having photos to indicate a grave’s location taken soon after its creation. Justice has been done in at least one IS mass killing – that of about 1,700 Iraqi soldiers who were forced to lie face-down in a ditch and then machine-gunned at Camp Speicher. On Aug 21, 36 men convicted in those killings were hanged at Iraq’s Nasiriyah prison. But justice is likely to be elusive in areas still firmly under IS control, even though the extremists have filmed themselves committing the atrocities. That’s the case for a deep natural sinkhole outside Mosul that is now a pit of corpses.

In Syria’s Raqqa province, thousands of bodies are believed to have been thrown into the giant Al-Houta crevasse. Conditions in much of Syria remain a mystery. Activists believe there are hundreds of mass graves in IS-controlled areas that can only be explored when fighting stops. By that time, they fear any effort to document the massacres, exhume and identify the remains will become infinitely more complicated.

Working behind IS lines, local residents have informally documented some mass graves, even partially digging some up. Some of the worst have been found in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour. There, 400 members of the Shueitat tribe were found in one grave, just some of the up to 1,000 members of the tribe believed to have been massacred by IS when the militants took over the area, said Ziad Awad, the editor of an online publication on Deir el-Zour called The Eye of the City who is trying to document the graves.

In Raqqa province, the bodies of 160 Syrian soldiers, killed when IS overran their base, were found in seven large pits. So far, at least 17 mass graves are known, though largely unreachable, in a list put together from AP interviews with activists from Syrian provinces still under IS rule as well as fighters and residents in former IS strongholds. “This is a drop in an ocean of mass graves expected to be discovered in the future in Syria,” said Awad.- AP</s>HARDAN, Iraq (AP) - Peering through binoculars, the young man watched as Islamic State terrorists gunned down the handcuffed men and then buried them with a waiting bulldozer. For six days he watched as IS filled one grave after another with his friends and neighbors.

The five graves arranged at the foot of Sinjar mountain hold the bodies of dozens of minority Yazidis killed in the Islamic State group’s bloody onslaught in August 2014. They are a fraction of the mass graves Islamic State terrorists have scattered across Iraq and Syria.

In exclusive interviews, photos and research, The Associated Press has documented and mapped 72 of the mass graves, the most comprehensive survey so far, with many more expected to be uncovered as the Islamic State group’s territory shrinks.

In Syria, AP has obtained locations for 17 mass graves, including one with the bodies of hundreds of members of a single tribe all but exterminated when IS terrorists took over their region.

For at least 16 of the Iraqi graves, most in territory too dangerous to excavate, officials do not even guess the number of dead. In others, the estimates are based on memories of traumatized survivors, Islamic State propaganda and what can be gleaned from a cursory look at the earth.

Still, even the known numbers of victims buried are staggering — from 5,200 to more than 15,000.

Satellites offer the clearest look at massacres such as the one at Badoush Prison in June 2014 that left 600 inmates dead. A patch of scraped earth shows the likely site, according to exclusive photos obtained by the imagery intelligence firm AllSource Analysis and shared with AP.

On Sinjar Mountain, Rasho Qassim drives daily past the mass grave in Hardan that holds the bodies of his two sons.

The sites are roped off and awaiting the money and the political will for excavation. The evidence they contain is scoured by wind and baked by sun.

“We want to take them out of here. There are only bones left. But they said ‘No, they have to stay there, a committee will come and exhume them later,'” said Qassim, standing at the flimsy protective fence.

IS made no attempt to hide its atrocities. But proving what United Nations officials and others have described as an ongoing genocide will be complicated as the graves deteriorate. IS targeted the Yazidis for slaughter because it considers them infidels. The Yazidi faith has elements of Christianity and Islam but is distinct.

“There’s been virtually no effort to systematically document the crimes perpetrated, to preserve the evidence,” said Naomi Kikoler, who recently visited for the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. The graves are largely documented by the aid group Yazda.

Through binoculars, Arkan Qassem watched it all. His village, Gurmiz, overlooks Hardan and the plain below. When the jihadis swept through, everyone in Gurmiz fled up the mountaintop. Then Arkan and nine other men returned with light weapons, hoping to defend their homes.

The first night, a bulldozer’s headlights illuminated the killing of a group of handcuffed men. Then the machine plowed over their bodies.

Over six days, the fighters killed three more groups — several dozen each, usually with hands bound. Once, the terrorists lit a bonfire, but Arkan couldn’t make out its purpose.

Two years later, the 32-year-old has since returned home, living in an area dotted with mass graves.

“I have lots of people I know there. Mostly friends and neighbors,” he said. “It’s very difficult to look at them every day.”

Nearly every area freed from IS control has unmasked new mass graves, like one found near a stadium in Ramadi. The graves are easy enough to find, most covered with just a thin coating of earth.

“They are beheading them, shooting them, running them over in cars, all kinds of killing techniques, and they don’t even try to hide it,” said Sirwan Jalal, the director of Iraqi Kurdistan’s agency in charge of mass graves.

No one outside IS has seen the Iraqi ravine where hundreds of prison inmates were killed. Satellite images of scraped dirt along the river point to its location, according to Steve Wood of AllSource. His analysts triangulated survivors’ accounts and began to systematically search the desert according to their descriptions of that day, June 10, 2014.

The inmates were separated by religion, and Shiites had to count off, according to accounts by 15 survivors gathered by Human Rights Watch.

“I was number 43. I heard them say ‘615,’ and then one ISIS guy said, ‘We’re going to eat well tonight.’ A man behind us asked, ‘Are you ready?’ Another person answered ‘Yes,’ and began shooting at us with a machine-gun,” according to the Human Rights Watch account of a survivor identified only as A.S. The 15 men survived by playing dead.

Justice has been done in at least one IS mass killing — that of about 1,700 Iraqi soldiers who were machine-gunned at Camp Speicher. On Aug. 21, 36 IS terrorists were hanged for those deaths.

But justice is likely to elude areas still under IS control, even when the terrorists film the atrocities themselves. That’s the case for a natural sinkhole outside Mosul that is now a pit of corpses. And in Syria’s Raqqa province, where thousands of bodies are believed to have been thrown into the al-Houta crevasse.

Hundreds of mass graves are believed to be in areas that can only be explored when fighting stops. So far, at least 17 are known, in the list put together from AP interviews with activists, fighters and residents in former IS strongholds.

Some of the worst are in Deir el-Zour province. There, 400 members of the Shueitat tribe were found in one grave, just some of the up to 1,000 tribesmen believed to have been massacred by IS, said Ziad Awad, the editor of the local publication, The Eye of the City, who is documenting the graves.

“This is a drop in an ocean of mass graves expected to be discovered in the future in Syria,” said Awad.</s>A survey of mass graves has identified 72 sites in which Islamic State buried the victims of its atrocities in Syria and Iraq.

Up to 15,000 victims of genocide and mass slaughter may be buried in the sites across territory where the militants formerly held sway, according to a comprehensive assessment by the Associated Press.

The figures are based on the documentation and mapping of the 72 mass graves as well as excavations by Iraqi officials, the testimony of survivors, Isis propaganda campaigns and analysis of the ground where the victims were buried.

The numbers offer the clearest evidence yet of the scale of Isis’s crimes as it eliminated enemies and minorities in Syria to establish its stronghold in Syria and the violence it wrought as it surged into Iraq in 2014 and conquered the plains of Nineveh, killing and enslaving thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority as well as members of the Shia community.

Further mass graves are expected to be uncovered as Isis retreats in the face of a US-led coalition and allied forces on the ground in Iraq and Syria, ceding ground outside of Mosul and Raqqa – the two most populous cities under its control.

The study identified 17 mass graves in Syria alone, including one with the bodies of hundreds of members of a single tribe that was largely exterminated when Isis captured the region. Sinjar mountain, Iraq, where the Yazidis took refuge as the militants raided their ancestral home, contains six burial sites and the bodies of more than 100 people.

Some areas where mass graves were uncovered are still too dangerous for a comprehensive excavation that would allow an accurate count of the victims.

Isis has often flaunted its mass atrocities, justifying the enslavement and murder of the Yazidis on obtuse religious grounds, and publishing propaganda videos and images of their crimes. Their most infamous large-scale killings were the Camp Speicher massacre in Iraq, when the group murdered more than 1,500 Shia army cadets in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s birthplace, and the August 2014 massacre of more than 700 members of the Shaitat tribe in eastern Syria for their opposition to Isis rule.

One site outside the Badoush prison in Iraq is believed to contained the bodies of 600 inmates killed by the militants in their summer 2014 rampage.



The Associated Press estimated the number of known victims as between 5,200 and more than 15,000, a figure the agency described as staggering. The largest mass grave is believed to hold thousands of victims.</s>Surrounded by smoke and flames, the sound of gunshots echoing around him, the young man crouched in the creek for hours, listening to the men in his family die.

On the other side of the mountain, another survivor peered through binoculars as the handcuffed men of neighboring villages were shot and then buried by a waiting bulldozer. For six days he watched as the extremists filled one grave after another with his friends and relatives.

Between them, the two scenes of horror on Sinjar mountain contain six burial sites and the bodies of more than 100 people, just a small fraction of the mass graves Islamic State extremists have scattered across Iraq and Syria.

In exclusive interviews, photos and research, The Associated Press has documented and mapped 72 of the mass graves, the most comprehensive survey so far, with many more expected to be uncovered as the Islamic State group's territory shrinks. In Syria, AP has obtained locations for 17 mass graves, including one with the bodies of hundreds of members of a single tribe all but exterminated when IS extremists took over their region. For at least 16 of the Iraqi graves, most in territory too dangerous to excavate, officials do not even guess the number of dead. In others, the estimates are based on memories of traumatized survivors, Islamic State propaganda and what can be gleaned from a cursory look at the earth. Still, even the known victims buried are staggering — from 5,200 to more than 15,000.

Sinjar mountain is dotted with mass graves, some in territory clawed back from IS after the group's onslaught against the Yazidi minority in August 2014; others in the deadly no man's land that has yet to be secured.

The bodies of Talal Murat's father, uncles and cousins lie beneath the rubble of the family farm, awaiting a time when it is safe for surviving relatives to return to the place where the men were gunned down. On Sinjar's other flank, Rasho Qassim drives daily past the graves holding the bodies of his two sons. The road is in territory long since seized back, but the five sites are untouched, roped off and awaiting the money or the political will for excavation, as the evidence they contain is scoured away by the wind and baked by the sun.

"We want to take them out of here. There are only bones left. But they said 'No, they have to stay there, a committee will come and exhume them later,'" said Qassim, standing at the edge of the flimsy fence surrounding one site, where his two sons are buried. "It has been two years but nobody has come."

IS made no attempt to hide its atrocities. In fact it boasted of them. But proving what United Nations officials and others have described as an ongoing genocide — and prosecuting those behind it — will be complicated as the graves deteriorate.

"We see clear evidence of the intent to destroy the Yazidi people," said Naomi Kikoler, who recently visited the region for the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. "There's been virtually no effort to systematically document the crimes perpetrated, to preserve the evidence, and to ensure that mass graves are identified and protected."

Then there are the graves still out of reach. The Islamic State group's atrocities extend well outside the Yazidi region in northern Iraq.

Satellites offer the clearest look at massacres such as the one at Badoush Prison in June 2014 that left 600 male inmates dead. A patch of scraped earth and tire tracks show the likely killing site, according to exclusive photos obtained by the imagery intelligence firm AllSource Analysis.

Of the 72 mass graves documented by AP, the smallest contains three bodies; the largest is believed to hold thousands, but no one knows for sure.

All they could do was watch the slaughter

On the northern flank of Sinjar mountain, five grave sites ring a desert crossroads. It is here that the young men of Hardan village are buried, under thistles and piles of cracked earth. They were killed in the bloody IS offensive of August 2014.

Through his binoculars, Arkan Qassem watched it all. His village, Gurmiz, is just up the slope from Hardan, giving a clear view over the plain below. When the jihadis swept over the area, everyone in Gurmiz fled up the mountaintop for refuge. Then Arkan and nine other men returned to their village with light weapons to try to defend their homes.

Instead, all they could do was watch the slaughter below. Arkan witnessed the militants set up checkpoints, preventing residents from leaving. Women and children were taken away.

Then the killings began. The first night, Arkan saw the militants line up a group of handcuffed men in the headlights of a bulldozer at an intersection, less than a half mile down the slope from Gurmiz. They gunned the men down, then the bulldozer plowed the earth over their bodies.

Over six days, Arkan and his comrades watched helplessly as the fighters brought out three more groups of men — several dozen each, usually with hands bound — to the crossroads and killed them. He didn't always see what they did with the bodies. One time, he saw them lighting a bonfire, but he couldn't see why.

Finally, the jihadis brought in artillery and prepared to make an assault on Gurmiz. Arkan and his comrades fled up the mountain to where their families had taken refuge.

Now, since IS fighters were driven out of the area, the 32-year-old has returned to his home. But he's haunted by the site. As documented by the aid group Yazda, which has mapped the Sinjar sites, the graves are in a rough pentagon flanking the crossroads, largely unprotected. Around one of them is a mesh fence and a wind-battered sign. As Arkan spoke at the site, a shepherd herded his flock nearby.

"I have lots of people I know there. Mostly friends and neighbors," he said. "It's very difficult to look at them every day."

'This body is wearing my father's clothes'

As IS fighters swarmed into the Sinjar area in early August 2014, Talal fled his town along with his father, mother, four sisters and younger brother. They and dozens of other men, women and children from his extended clan converged on an uncle's farm outside the town of Tel Azer. They prayed it was remote enough to escape the killings that were already engulfing so many Yazidis.

The jihadis fired at the house from a distance. Then they rolled up in their vehicles and shot one man in the head as they stood in the yard. They surrounded the farmhouse, ordered everyone outside and demanded the impossible: Convert.</s>HARDAN, Iraq -- Five graves arranged at the foot of Sinjar Mountain hold the bodies of dozens of minority Yazidis killed in the Islamic State group's bloody onslaught in August 2014. They are a fraction of the mass graves the extremists have scattered across Iraq and Syria.

In interviews, photos and research, The Associated Press has documented and mapped 72 of the mass graves, with many more expected to be uncovered as the Islamic State group's territory shrinks.

In Syria, the news agency has obtained locations for 17 mass graves, including one with the bodies of hundreds of members of a single tribe all but exterminated when the extremists took over the tribe's region.

For at least 16 of the Iraqi graves, most in territory too dangerous to excavate, officials do not even guess the number of dead. In others, the estimates are based on memories of traumatized survivors, Islamic State propaganda and what can be gleaned from a cursory look at the ground.

Still, even the known numbers of victims buried are staggering -- from 5,200 to more than 15,000.

Satellites offer the clearest look at massacres such as the one at Badoush Prison in June 2014 that left 600 inmates dead. A patch of scraped earth shows the likely site, according to photos obtained by the imagery intelligence firm AllSource Analysis and shared with the AP.

Of the 72 mass graves documented, the smallest contains three bodies; the largest is believed to hold thousands, but no one knows for sure.

On Sinjar Mountain, Rasho Qassim drives daily past the mass grave in Hardan that holds the bodies of his two sons.

The sites are roped off and awaiting the money and the political will for excavation. The evidence they contain is scoured by wind and baked by sun.

"We want to take them out of here. There are only bones left. But they said, 'No, they have to stay there, a committee will come and exhume them later,'" said Qassim, standing at the flimsy protective fence.

The Islamic State made no attempt to hide its acts. But proving what United Nations officials and others have described as an ongoing genocide will be complicated as the graves deteriorate. The Islamic State targeted the Yazidis for slaughter because it considers them heretics. The Yazidi faith has elements of Christianity and Islam but is distinct.

"There's been virtually no effort to systematically document the crimes perpetrated, to preserve the evidence," said Naomi Kikoler, who recently visited for the Holocaust Museum in Washington. The graves are largely documented by the aid group Yazda.

Through binoculars, Arkan Qassem watched it all. His village, Gurmiz, overlooks Hardan and the plain below. When the jihadis swept through, everyone in Gurmiz fled to the mountaintop. Then Arkan and nine other men returned with light weapons, hoping to defend their homes.

The first night, a bulldozer's headlights illuminated the killing of a group of handcuffed men. Then the machine plowed over their bodies.

Over six days, the fighters killed three more groups -- several dozen each, most of whom usually had their hands bound. Once, the extremists lit a bonfire, but Arkan couldn't make out its purpose.

Two years later, the 32-year-old has returned home, living in an area dotted with mass graves.

"I have lots of people I know there, mostly friends and neighbors," he said. "It's very difficult to look at them every day."

Nearly every area freed from Islamic State control has uncovered mass graves, like one found near a stadium in Ramadi. The graves are easy enough to find, most covered with just a thin coating of earth.

"They are beheading them, shooting them, running them over in cars, all kinds of killing techniques, and they don't even try to hide it," said Sirwan Jalal, the director of Iraqi Kurdistan's agency in charge of mass graves.

No one outside the Islamic State has seen the Iraqi ravine where hundreds of prison inmates were killed. Satellite images of scraped dirt along the river point to its location, according to Steve Wood of AllSource. His analysts triangulated survivors' accounts and began systematically to search the desert according to their descriptions of that day, June 10, 2014.

The inmates were separated by religion, and Shiites had to count off, according to accounts by 15 survivors gathered by Human Rights Watch.

"I was number 43. I heard them say '615,' and then one ISIS guy said, 'We're going to eat well tonight.' A man behind us asked, 'Are you ready?' Another person answered 'Yes,' and began shooting at us with a machine-gun," according to the Human Rights Watch account of a survivor identified only as A.S. The 15 men survived by playing dead.

Justice has been done in at least one mass killing by the Islamic State -- that of about 1,700 Iraqi soldiers who were killed by machine gun at Camp Speicher. On Aug. 21, 36 Islamic State militants were hanged for those deaths.

But justice is likely to elude areas still under Islamic State control, even when the extremists film the acts themselves. That's the case for a natural sinkhole outside Mosul that is now a pit of corpses. And in Syria's Raqqa province, where thousands of bodies are believed to have been thrown into the al-Houta crevasse.

Conditions in much of Syria remain a mystery. Activists believe there are hundreds of mass graves in Islamic State-controlled areas that can be explored only when fighting stops. By that time, they fear, any effort to document the massacres, exhume and identify the remains will become infinitely more complicated.

Working behind Islamic State lines, Syrians informally have documented some mass graves, even partially digging some up. Some of the worst have been found in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour. There, 400 members of the Shueitat tribe were found in one grave, just some of the up to 1,000 members of the tribe believed to have been massacred by the Islamic State group when the militants took over the area, said Ziad Awad, the editor of an online publication on Deir el-Zour called The Eye of the City, who is trying to document the graves.

In Raqqa province, the bodies of 160 Syrian soldiers, killed when the Islamic State overran their base, were found in seven large pits.

So far, at least 17 mass graves are known, though largely unreachable, in a list put together from interviews with activists from Syrian provinces still under Islamic State rule as well as fighters and residents in former Islamic State strongholds.

"This is a drop in an ocean of mass graves expected to be discovered in the future in Syria," Awad said.

Information for this article was contributed by Balint Szlanko, Salar Salim, Sinan Salaheddin, Zeina Karam, Philip Issa and Maya Alleruzzo of The Associated Press.</s>HARDAN, Iraq — Surrounded by smoke and flames, the sound of gunshots echoing around him, the young man crouched in the creek for hours, listening to the men in his family die.

On the other side of the mountain, another survivor peered through binoculars as the handcuffed men of neighboring villages were shot and then buried by a waiting bulldozer. For six days he watched as the extremists filled one grave after another with his friends and relatives. Between them, the two scenes of horror on Sinjar mountain contain six burial sites and the bodies of more than 100 people, just a small fraction of the mass graves Islamic State extremists have scattered across Iraq and Syria.(nypost.com)…[+]</s>(IraqiNews.com) Baghdad – In a survey conducted by the Associated Press Agency it was revealed that there are about 72 mass graves in Iraq and Syria, which contain the remains of nearly 15000 victims, who were killed by ISIS. The survey further suggested the presence of other graves in Mosul and Raqqa.

“There are about 72 mass graves in Iraq and Syria, which contains the remains of nearly 15000 victims who were killed by ISIS in the two nations,” the survey report said.

According to survey report, smallest grave contained the remains of three bodies, and the largest one is believed to contain the remains of thousand victims.

“The high number of bodies and the graves is a clear evidence of the genocides carried out by ISIS against the ethnic groups in Syria and thousands of Yezidi people in Iraq,” the report further stated.

The report further revealed that one of the 17 graves discovered in Syria holds the bodies of hundreds of members of a single tribe close to completely exterminated when ISIS violently took over their region.

The Sinjar Mountain in Iraq is the location of another horrifying discovery. Roughly 70 people of the Yezidi tribe tried to flee their Sinjar homes before ISIS invaded in August 2014.

Officials do not even guess the number of dead inside at least 16 of the Iraqi graves, mostly in territory too dangerous to excavate. The estimates are based on the memories of traumatized survivors.

“This is a drop in the ocean of mass graves expected to be discovered in the future in Syria,” added the survey report.

According to the survey, other mass graves are expected to be discovered in the Iraqi city of Mosul and Syrian city of Raqqa if the Iraqi forces backed by the international coalition succeeded in forcing an ISIS retreat.
Thousands of Yazidi are believed to be buried in 72 newly-discovered mass graves left by ISIL after the 2014 massacre.