BAGHDAD: Iraqi paramilitary forces announced on Saturday that they had discovered a mass grave at Badush prison near Mosul containing the remains of hundreds of people executed by the militant Islamic State group.

Iraqi forces have found dozens of mass graves containing hundreds of bodies as they pushed IS back in more than two years of heavy fighting, including during the operation to retake Mosul.

IS reportedly killed up to 600 people after seizing Badush in 2014, and was also said to have held hundreds of kidnapped women from Iraq’s Yazidi minority at the facility.

The Iraqi military said that forces from the Hashed al-Shaabi — an umbrella group of pro-government forces that are dominated by Iran-backed Shia militias — were among the units that recaptured the prison from the jihadists.

Hashed forces found “a large mass grave containing the remains of around 500 civilian prisoners in (Badush) prison who were executed by (IS) gangs after they controlled the prison during their occupation of Mosul,” the military said.

The Hashed did not say how they reached that figure, which could not be independently confirmed, but it is in keeping with accounts of IS killing hundreds of inmates from Badush.

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), IS gunmen executed up to 600 inmates from the prison on June 10, 2014, forcing them to kneel along a nearby ravine and then shooting them with assault rifles, an account also contained in a United Nations report.

Most of those executed were said to have been members of Iraq’s Shia Muslim majority, whom IS considers heretics.

IS abuses at the jail did not end with executing its inmates. Iraqi lawmaker Vian Dakhil said in 2014 that the jihadists were holding more than 500 Yazidi women at Badush.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2017