104 Yezidi ISIS massacre victims buried in Sinjar
SINJAR, Iraq (North Press) – On Sunday, the Yezidi village of Kocho, south of Sinjar in northern Iraq, witnessed a funeral ceremony for 104 of the victims of the massacre committed by the Islamic State (ISIS) in August 2014.
The bodies were buried in the presence of the victims’ families and officials from Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq (KRG).
In her speech at the ceremony, Kocho village native and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad criticized the two prime ministers of the Baghdad and Erbil governments for not attending.
Safqan Murad, the Iraqi president’s advisor for Yezidi affairs, delivered the speech of Iraqi President Barham Salih: “We must work locally and internationally and with utmost efforts to reveal the fate of the remaining kidnapped by ISIS, liberate the living, and provide justice to the victims and their families in a way that achieves justice and dignity.”
Nawzad Hadi, the representative of the President of the KRG, spoke about the injustice inflicted on the Yezidis, saying, “The Yezidis must be compensated and Sinjar district should become a governorate.”
The first Yezidi mass grave was unearthed in Kocho village in mid-March 2019 by the Iraqi and KRG governments, in coordination with the United Nations investigation team to strengthen accountability for crimes committed by ISIS.
There have been 73 mass graves found in Sinjar so far, 17 of which have been unearthed. 347 Yezidis who were killed by ISIS in 2014 were exhumed from these graves.