On the occasion of National Mass Graves Day, Iraq’s Martyrs Foundation on May 16, 2022 began exhuming a newly identified mass grave south of Najaf in the presence of representatives of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). The remains of 15 people who were killed during the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq were uncovered. The former Ba’athist regime led by Saddam Hussein was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people through systematic campaigns of murder, including the genocidal Anfal campaign against the Kurds in the north during the 1980s and the crack down on the Shia uprising in the south following the Gulf War. Many of the victims were buried in mass graves in remote parts of the Iraqi desert without their families knowing the fates of their loved ones.
