On a sweltering August morning in northern Iraq, a team of forensic experts, local officials, and grieving families gathered at the edge of a vast sinkhole just south of Mosul. Known as Al-Khasfa, this site is now at the center of what may become one of the largest and most challenging mass grave excavations in modern Iraqi history. After years of delays and mounting public pressure, Iraqi authorities have finally begun the painstaking process of unearthing the remains of thousands believed to have been victims of the Islamic State (ISIS) during its brutal reign from 2014 to 2017.
According to the state-run Iraqi News Agency and corroborated by multiple international outlets, the excavation officially commenced on Sunday, August 17, 2025. The operation, led by Iraq’s Martyrs’ Foundation, the judiciary, and the Directorate of Mass Graves, is initially focused on recovering visible human remains and surface evidence. Full exhumation, officials say, will require international support and could take up to five years to complete, given the hazardous conditions at the site—including sulfuric water, unstable soil, and unexploded ordnance left behind by ISIS fighters.
“Khasfa is a very complicated site,” Ahmad Qusay al-Asady, head of the Martyrs’ Foundation’s mass graves excavation department, told The Associated Press. “Laboratory processing and a DNA database must come first to ensure proper identification. Full exhumations can only proceed once specialized assistance is secured to navigate the site’s hazards.”
The government’s commitment to the process has been underscored by a substantial allocation of resources. In March 2025, Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council announced the dedication of 40 billion dinars—roughly $27 million—to fund the excavation. Government spokesperson Bassem al-Awadi assured the public that all technical and legal measures would be taken to identify the victims, protect their rights, and support their families. “We will work on documenting this heinous crime and informing the world of its scale,” al-Awadi declared at a press conference near the site. He described ISIS’s atrocities as “the worst ideological deviation and perverse aggression our region has witnessed in centuries.”
Estimates regarding the number of victims buried at Al-Khasfa are staggering. Nineveh Governor Abdul Qader al-Dakhil told reporters that nearly 20,000 people from Mosul and surrounding areas were executed by ISIS and dumped into the pit. On a single day, the group reportedly killed more than 2,000 people, including 600 residents from the Wadi Hajar neighborhood. The victims represent a cross-section of Iraqi society—Sunni Arabs, Yazidis, Christians, Shabak, Turkmen, and Shiites from Tal Afar—many of whom were targeted for their affiliation with state institutions or their opposition to ISIS rule.
“ISIS executed thousands of Nineveh residents without distinction, including Yazidis, Christians, Shabak and Turkmen,” Governor al-Dakhil stated. The sheer scale of violence is echoed in the testimonies of survivors and families. Rabah Nouri Attiyah, a lawyer who has worked on more than 70 cases of missing people in Nineveh, told the AP that information from the foundation and Iraqi courts points to Khasfa as “the largest mass grave in modern Iraqi history.” While al-Asady cautioned that investigators cannot yet confirm this designation, he acknowledged that, “according to the size of the space, we estimate it to be one of the largest.”
The complexity of the site has not deterred families desperate for answers. For years, relatives of the missing have pleaded for the grave to be opened so that the remains can be identified and given proper burials. Among them is Ikhlas Mohammed Amin, a 55-year-old mother from Mosul who has been searching for her son, Qusai Shukr Mahmoud, since he was kidnapped by ISIS in 2016. “We hope to find anything about our son, whether he is dead or alive. We want to know his fate and hope for the best. It is not just me, but all mothers hope to find their son dead or alive. I have a martyr son before him, his brother. I go to his grave to console myself and cry, but about this son I can only hold his picture and cry. I do not know anything about him,” she told local reporters.
The emotional toll is compounded by the technical challenges. The grave’s depth, the presence of sulfuric water, and the risk of unexploded explosive devices make the excavation one of the most dangerous in the region. Ahmed Qusay al-Asady explained, “The grave is complex because it contains Kuwaiti water and unexploded explosive devices buried with the remains by ISIS terrorist gangs, according to the information we received, in addition to the movement and instability of the soil.”
Despite these obstacles, the excavation is seen as a historic moment for justice and closure. Mohammed Al Zakaria, a civil activist present at the site, described the reopening of Al-Khasfa as “a historic moment to restore justice and restore rights to their owners and the families of the victims.”
The background to this tragedy is as harrowing as it is recent. In June 2014, Mosul—then a vibrant economic and cultural center—fell to ISIS, becoming the group’s stronghold in Iraq. Over the next three years, ISIS imposed a reign of terror marked by mass executions, beheadings, and the enslavement of Yazidi women. The group’s defeat in Mosul in July 2017, followed by the fall of its de-facto capital Raqqa and its final rout in Baghouz, Syria, in March 2019, ended its territorial ambitions but left behind a legacy of trauma and unresolved disappearances.
The excavation at Al-Khasfa is more than a forensic operation; it is a reckoning with a dark chapter in Iraq’s recent past. The government’s pledge to document the crime and inform the world of its scale is as much about honoring the victims as it is about preventing such atrocities from fading into obscurity. As al-Awadi put it, “Evidence of ISIS’s crimes continues to emerge even years after their defeat.”
For families like Ikhlas’s, the hope is that, after years of uncertainty and grief, the process will finally bring answers. For Iraq as a nation, the excavation is a testament to resilience—and a somber reminder of the cost of extremism and the importance of justice.
