Last week, a federal government team began exhuming the remains of Kurdish victims of the Anfal campaign who had been buried in a mass grave in the southern province of al-Muthanna.
Othman told NRT that the remains have been sent to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Baghdad for DNA tests. Afterwards, they would be transferred to the Kurdistan Region.
He added that most of the victims buried in the grave were women and children, including infants. Based on their clothes, the victims are believed to have lived in the Garmyan area.
Othman also said that two additional mass graves had been discovered in the area and would be excavated soon.
In 1988, the Ba'athist regime launched the genocidal Anfal campaign against the Kurdish population and the Peshmerga and murdered at least 120,000 Kurds, some of whom were transferred to the desert areas in southern Iraq and killed there.
The discovery of classified military and security agency documents following the fall of the regime in 2003 has led to the discovery of a number of mass graves related to the Anfal campaign.
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