Iraq to hand over remains of 153 Anfal victims, all women and children, to Kurdistan Region
The bodies of 153 Kurdish women and children, killed in the Baath regime's Anfal genocide and buried in mass graves in Iraq's southern Samawah desert, have been prepared for handover to the Kurdistan Region.
RastinewsIraq's Martyrs Foundation and its Medico-Legal Institute have completed preparations to hand over the remains of 153 Anfal victims to the Kurdistan Region.
The new batch, prepared by the Martyrs Foundation's Mass Graves and Missing Persons Protection Directorate with support from forensic teams, consists entirely of women and children.
Mass graves in the Samawah desert
The remains were previously found by search teams in mass graves in the Badiya area of Samawah. The region is known as one of the sites where Kurds killed during the Baath regime's Anfal operations were buried.
The remains will be handed over to the relevant authorities in the Kurdistan Region for temporary burial and formal transfer with a ceremony.
Identification process to continue
Scientific examinations to identify the victims will continue. The process will go on until the remains are handed over to their families for final burial.
The work is being carried out to clarify the fate of the missing, document the crimes committed, and locate victims in mass graves.
The Anfal genocide
The Baath regime under Saddam Hussein carried out operations it called Anfal in Kurdistan between 1986 and 1989. According to Kurdish sources, 182,000 Kurds were killed and thousands of villages were destroyed in the operations.
A significant number of Kurdish women, children and elderly people detained during the Anfal campaign were taken to desert areas in southern Iraq and buried in mass graves. Iraq's High Criminal Court classified the Anfal campaign as genocide in 2007.