More than 200 mass graves have been uncovered in Iraq, in areas formerly controlled by ISIS, the United Nations said on Tuesday, Nov. 6.
The graves contain the remains of thousands of people, including women, children, the elderly and disabled, as well as members of Iraq’s armed forces and police, a U.N. report said.
The dead are thought to be the victims of the hardline Sunni group, who overran large areas of northern Iraq between June and December 2014.
The group has killed almost 33,000 civilians in Iraq and injured more than 55,000, the U.N. has previously said.
The grave sites are concentrated in four provinces —Ninewa, Kinuk, Sala al-Din, and Anbar —near the border with Syria.
The U.N. estimates between 6,000-12,000 bodies are contained in the 202 graves documented in the report. Exact numbers are hard to determine, as only 28 mass graves have been excavated so far, with just 1,258 bodies exhumed.
The smallest gravesite, in Mosul, contains eight bodies while the largest, the al-Khasfa sinkhole south of Mosul, is estimated to contain 4,000 bodies.
These deaths are part of what the U.N. has called a systematic and widespread campaign of violence.