MANNAR, SRI LANKA—The BBC reports that archaeologists in Sri Lanka have unearthed more than 90 skeletons at the site of a mass grave in the northern town of Mannar. Construction work near a bus terminal initially revealed the site earlier this year. The remains are assumed to have belonged to people who were killed during the country's recent civil war, which lasted 26 years and ended in 2009. According to University of Kelaniya forensic archaeologist Raj Somadeva, who leads the team, not all the people were buried at the site in the same manner. "In one segment we have a proper cemetery," says Somadeva. "In the second part, you have a collection of human skeletons which have been deposited in an informal way." Several mass graves found since the war came to an end, but the Mannar site is one of the biggest yet discovered. To read about the work of forensic archaeologists at the border of the United States, go to “The Journey to El Norte.” </s> Image caption Forensic archaeologists were brought in after building workers unearthed human remains

Experts in northern Sri Lanka are trying to identify the remains of dozens of bodies in a mass grave in the country's former war zone.

So far the skeletal remains of more than 90 people have been unearthed in the north-western town of Mannar.

The mass grave is the second biggest found in the north since the end of the conflict in 2009.

The 26-year war between troops and separatist Tamil rebels left at least 100,000 people dead, and many missing.

A court ordered detailed excavations at the site - a former co-operative wholesale depot near the main bus terminus - after human remains were found by workers digging foundations for a new building earlier this year.

"The entire area can be divided into two parts. In one segment we have a proper cemetery. In the second part, you have a collection of human skeletons which have been deposited in an informal way," said Professor Raj Somadeva, a forensic archaeologist from the University of Kelaniya near Colombo, who is leading a team of experts at the site.

Image caption None of the victims have been identified

There is more ground still to excavate and he says more skeletons could be found. The remains unearthed by his team include the skeletons of at least six children.

Who the victims were - and who killed them and when - remains unclear. The town of Mannar is dominated by ethnic minority Tamils.

Local police guard the site so no-one can tamper with it and the forensic archaeologists can painstakingly remove skulls and other bones from the dirt without being disturbed. They use brushes and small chisels so the remains are not damaged.

No clothes or other items have been found in the grave that could help identify the victims.

While Mannar town remained mostly under army control during the civil war, Tamil Tiger rebels dominated its surrounding areas and many other parts of the district. The military captured the entire district after ferocious battles, which ended almost 10 years ago.

The way the bodies are arranged inside the mass grave has puzzled the experts.

"We are concerned about the line position. [It is] completely chaotic - you have two layers of skeletons roughly," said Prof Somadeva.

As his team uncovers the human remains, they transfer them to the custody of the court in Mannar, which will decide the future course of action once the excavation is complete.

Prof Somadeva and his colleagues are also yet to determine how the victims died. The age of the bodies will be analysed later.

So far no one has been blamed for the killings.

Image caption Professor Somadeva hopes his work will help find answers

A number of mass graves have been unearthed in Sri Lanka's former war zone since the conflict ended.

None found so far has contained more bodies than a site in another part of Mannar - adjacent to Thiruketheeswaram, a prominent Hindu temple - where the remains of 96 people were discovered in 2014.

But four years on there's still no clarity in this case either, about who was killed and by whom.

Rights groups allege that both the military and the Tamil Tigers inflicted widespread civilian casualties. At least 20,000 people disappeared during the conflict.

But the government has always denied its forces had anything to do with civilian deaths or disappearances.

After years of international pressure, the government set up an independent body, the Office of the Missing Persons (OMP), earlier this year to investigate the disappearances. The OMP has provided partial funding for the excavation in Mannar.

OMP chairman Saliya Pieris insists that a detailed investigation at the latest grave found in Mannar is important.

"The primary task of the OMP is tracing the disappeared and informing the relatives about the circumstances of their disappearances.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Many people were taken into custody during the conflict and thousands disappeared

"One of the aspects of this tracing would be naturally [to find out] if there are mass graves and there are people who have been disappeared, who have been buried in mass graves."

But given the failure of the authorities to investigate the remains unearthed from previous mass graves, there is scepticism among Tamils over what the new inquiry might achieve.

"Hundreds of people disappeared in Mannar district during the conflict while moving from uncontrolled areas to controlled areas," said Victor Sosai, vicar general of the Catholic Diocese of Mannar.

"There have been allegations that several Tamils who were trying to flee the conflict to India on boats were also intercepted and their fate is unknown."

He visited the site of the latest mass grave along with the Bishop of Mannar, Emmanuel Fernando, during the initial stages of the excavation.

"We understand that they have found skeletons of children and adults, we need to really find out more about who these people are and how they died and who was responsible," Rev Sosai says.

The Tamil Tigers were accused of ruthlessly eliminating fighters and supporters of rival Tamil militant groups. They were also accused of executing Sri Lankan soldiers captured in battle.

Image copyright Human Rights Watch Image caption Both sides were accused of widespread atrocities in the conflict

Soon after the end of the conflict, some Tamils accused the rebels of firing at fleeing civilians on the beaches of north-eastern Mullaitivu district during the final days of the war. The military is also accused of widespread atrocities.

But the army dismisses any suggestion that soldiers are connected with the bodies found in the mass grave in Mannar.

"Definitely there is no link between this grave and the army. No one has accused the army so far," said army spokesman Brig Sumith Atapattu.

But many in the minority Tamil community say if Sri Lanka really wants to come to terms with its past, then it has to sincerely address the issue of the disappeared by investigating mass graves.

Only then might the families affected be able to properly grieve and try to move on. </s> Investigators say they have unearthed more than 100 skeletons from a mass grave in the northern Sri Lankan town of Mannar, where Tamil guerrillas and state security forces clashed during the country’s 26-year civil war.



More bodies are being recovered each day from the site, which is already among the largest mass graves found in the country. About 50% of the trench is still to be excavated.

“We have found 101 people and already moved 96 individual skeletons from the trench,” said Raj Somadeva, an archaeologist working on the site.

Unlike a mass grave previously discovered in central town of Matale, where the bodies were laid neatly beside each other, the remains in Mannar appeared to have been dumped, making the process of identifying individual skeletons more difficult.

As many as 10 skeletons appeared to belong to juveniles, Somadeva said. The team also found ceramic pottery, pieces of porcelain and metallic objects that could be jewellery.



The remains, discovered about three metres below ground, will undergo forensic analysis to determine how many individuals were buried and when they died. A court ordered the excavation in May after workers stumbled on bones while digging the foundations for a building.

It is being funded by the Office of Missing Persons, a government agency established in 2016 to trace more than 20,000 people estimated to have gone missing during the civil war, mainly fought between the government and militant Tamil nationalists.

Government forces were regularly accused of carrying out abductions and large-scale killings during the war. Tamil separatist groups including the Tamil Tigers have also been accused of atrocities against civilians and opposition fighters.

The war ended in 2009 with a series of ruthless offensives by the Sri Lankan military. The UN estimates 40,000 civilians were killed in the final weeks of the conflict and accused both sides of “horrific” human rights abuses.

Human rights groups have speculated that there may be dozens of mass graves across Sri Lanka. More than 150 bodies were discovered in 2012 in the grounds of a government hospital in Matale. A judge described the site as a crime scene, and pointed to evidence the bodies were about 25 years old, suggesting they may have been buried during a leftist insurrection against the government. An investigation has stalled.

Another mass grave was found in Mannar in February 2014. Workers preparing to lay a water pipe discovered more than 30 skeletons buried in layers near a well-known temple.

There have also been instances of families stumbling on mass graves in their gardens in former conflict areas.

The UN estimates that between 80,000 and 100,000 people were killed during the conflict. </s> The culture of impunity to the security forces under the DRACONIAN PREVENTION TERRORISM ACT [PTA] and their licence to kill especially the Tamils caused several disappearances and extrajudicial killings in Sri Lanka.

It is to be noted that the Mass Graves, Disappearances and the Prevention of Terrorism Act [PTA] are all inter-connected. The Office of the Missing Persons is toothless in powers and the clauses in this Act seem to be protecting the criminals and denying justice to the victims. The victims have no confidence in this Office and are reluctant to give evidence due to this flaw.

It is strongly suspected that the Government and the Security forces are afraid of releasing the lands occupied by them and to release the names of those Tamils forcefully arrested/surrendered to the security forces due to the following reasons:
• There are several mass graves in the lands occupied by the security forces.
• The Tamils who were forcefully arrested or surrendered and killed are buried in these mass graves.

Sri Lanka: Mass graves everywhere, but where are the killers?

( February 4, 2018, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) Sri Lanka’s armed conflicts have touched the whole Island, affecting all its ethnicities and faiths. By 2013, Sri Lanka recorded the second highest number of unresolved disappearances in the world.[1] Despite the rhetoric of successive regimes, the people had disappeared not because they had gone abroad or been displaced, rather they had been killed and or executed in order to generate fear and anguish among the population. Their bodies are said to be piled up and buried in mass graves somewhere in the island. Several such mass graves have been discovered in recent years that warrant genuine investigations.

 Source

 https://www.slguardian.org/sri-lanka-mass-graves-everywhere-but-where-are-the-killers-part-01/

Although several killings took place and several Tamil civilians went missing, only this brutal murder attracted world media and exposure forced the Government to take some steps which led to the exposure of several mass graves in Chemmani

It was in 1998, there was an electrifying break in the Chemmani disappearances. Mrs. Kumaratunga [then President] personally saw to a rare prosecution of soldiers. The defendants were accused of raping and murdering an 18-year-old school girl Krisanthi Kumaraswamy at the checkpoint, then killing the school girl’s mother and 16-year-old brother when they came looking for her.

Just before the soldiers were to be sentenced to death by hanging, one of them, Lance Cpl. Somaratne Rajapakse, declared in open court that he knew the location of mass graves around the checkpoint where more than 400 people killed by the security forces in 1996 were buried.

To test his credibility, Corporal Rajapakse was flown to Jaffna and taken to the Chemmani checkpoint in June 1999. He led investigators to a grave that held two bodies.

In late August, more than three weeks of full-scale exhumations began in the heart of the war zone. The atmosphere was tense. At the checkpoint, the condemned men were palpably scared, observers say. And international observers, worried about rebel attacks, were heavily guarded.

”We’d drive like hell to get to the checkpoint,” said Robert Stair, a forensic archaeologist from Canada who took part in the exhumations. ”We took a different route every day.”

Corporal Rajapakse and the other soldiers eventually led the way to seven more graves, but the remains of only 13 people were found.

Mr. Stair and William D. Haglund, Director of the international forensic program for the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights, said the Sri Lankan authorities had not moved aggressively enough to seek information about the hundreds of others.

Nor did Sri Lanka, lacking the modern methods used to investigate serial murders in the West, accept advice to get assistance from British, Australian or Canadian police experts, said Ms. Massage of Amnesty International.

”Somewhere within the Ministry of Defense must be blocks against this proceeding,” she said.



 Sixty-six human skeletons, including children and women, have been spotted so far and fifty-six of the skeletal remains have been exhumed, said journalists who accessed the site of mass grave excavations at the premises of the premises of former CWE building in the city of Mannaar on Monday. The excavation had been suspended for a few days due to the annual feast at Madu church.

In the meantime, journalists in Mannaar have secured access to news coverage of the mass grave site.

 The SL Magistrates’ Court in Mannaar prohibited media coverage at the request of the SL Police on 07 August.

 [Source]

 https://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=39165

 TamilNet, Monday, 20 August 2018, 23:02 GMT]

Human skeletons, including that of children, believed to belong to the massacred Eezham Tamils during the times of genocidal war, have been discovered at two separate locations in the city of Jaffna between 15th and 20th of July. At the Jaffna Fort, bones of a child along with a golden ring engraved with the initials ‘SA’ has been recovered. Following this discovery, the officials of Colombo’s Archaeological Department have sent Tamil excavators home while allowing the Sinhala and the British excavators to proceed with the work. On Friday, another alleged mass grave discovered at Naayanmaar-kaddu in Ka’l’liyang-kaadu in Jaffna seems to be an extension of the Chemma’ni killing fields from the times of Chandrika Kumaratunga’s genocidal rule of Jaffna in the mid-1990s.

 Source:

 https://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=39135

 [TamilNet, Saturday, 21 July 2018, 21:44 GMT]



 The existence of another mass grave has been confirmed after the discovery of human skeletal remains from sands dug from an area previously used as the ‘High-Security Zone’ of the occupying Sinhala military of genocidal Sri Lanka in mainland Mannaar. The latest discovery is from the island of Mannaar where the building of SL state-owned department store network, known as Co-operative Wholesale Establishment (CWE), was situated. The building has been dismantled to put up a new five storey building for the CWE Sathosa. The occupying SL military is still stationed 50 feets close to the site.

The lawyers representing the enforced disappeared Tamils in Mannaar told TamilNet on Wednesday that the latest traces they had witnessed since 28th May, when the excavations started at the site, confirms the fear that the occupying Sinhala military was having institutionalised torture chambers and massacre sites attached to its military base in the site.

 [Source]

 https://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=39085

 TamilNet, Friday, 01 June 2018, 17:06 GMT]

 

 The occupying Sri Lankan military relocating its 522 Brigade Headquarters, which was the artillery and command base at the Northern front during the war, has been removing the skeletons including the sand from an alleged mass grave site at the locality of the old base in recent weeks, reliable sources in Thenmaraadchi told TamilNet on Monday. After removing all the traces, the bunkers have been filled with sand brought from elsewhere. Despite the claim that it had moved the camp to a new locality, at Aasaippi’l’lai-yeattam at Mirusuvil, the SL military was present at the old site for several weeks to ensure that all traces have been removed, the sources further said.

The notorious Vara’ni camp was situated at Point Pedro – Kodikaamam Road since 1996 when Jaffna peninsula was captured by the genocidal military of Sri Lanka.

The command base, which was blocking the main road, was situated near Vara’ni MMV School at the private lands belonging to more than 80 families.

It was the main supply camp and the artillery base to the Northern frontline during the war.

 Vara’ni camp was a notorious place where the Tamils abducted in Thenmaraadchi region were taken to torture chambers and slain. This includes the 8 youths who were abducted from a temple .

 [Source]

 https://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=37178

 TamilNet, Monday, 21 April 2014, 23:21 GMT]

The SL military is particular in concealing mass graves at places where military bases were situated,

contributed to a climate of impunity and hampered investigations into the massacres and disappearances of civilians

Powers of the Office of the Missing Persons [OMP}

Sri Lanka’s Office of the Missing Persons [OMP] is toothless and does not have the authority to prosecute/arrest anyone involved in this crime. They have the power to investigate and collect evidence only.

The United Nations, United Nations Security Council, United Nations Human Rights Council and the International Community have the moral responsibility in the name of humanity to implement the following immediately.
• Lands occupied by the Security Forces and its surroundings to be tested for any mass graves using latest technology and techniques and soil tests to solve the problem of thousands of Tamils went missing since before and after the end of the war.
• Force the Sri Lankan Government to release the list of those arrested by the Security forces/Police and those who surrendered to the security forces and police.

It is agonizing to note that sinister moves of Sri Lanka’s Government to stall suppress and hide the truth and circumstances surrounding these skeletons of Tamil civilians killed violently at some point of time by the Security forces.

 This is not surprising as Sri Lanka follows the entrenched policy and culture of impunity for Security forces and denial of accountability and justice to the Tamil victims.

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

Kumarathasan Rasingam is a Senior Citizen of Canada, Human rights activist, Former President of the Tamil Canadian Elders for Human Rights Org. </s> United Nations investigators have unearthed scores of mass graves in a conflict-plagued region of the Democratic Republic of Congo that top U.N. officials describe as a scene of “horror.”

The U.N. says the Congolese military dug the mass grave after killing over 100 people last month, a sign that the DRC’s violence and political turmoil will almost certainly get worse before it gets better.

On Wednesday, the U.N. announced that its investigators have confirmed the existence of 17 new mass graves sites in the DRC’s Kasai region, bring the tally up to 40 mass graves discovered in the past nine months. The most recent batch was unearthed after the Congolese military killed at least 114 people, including 41 children, in its campaign to uproot an insurgency by the Kamuina Nsapu militia.

Most civilians were reportedly killed in their homes as soldiers went door to door hunting militia members. The U.N. also recounted reports of government forces raping women and girls. The U.N. accused the Kamuina Nsapu militia of carrying out their own atrocities and forcibly recruiting hundreds of child soldiers into their ranks.

The discovery sheds new light on a deadly conflict in the Kasai region that has displaced hundreds of thousands and morphed into a serious threat to embattled DRC President Joseph Kabila’s grip on power. While the Kamuina Nsapu rebellion is rooted in local grievances, it quickly ignited a nationwide political powder keg as grievances pile up against Kabila. Kabila refused to step down after his constitutional term limit expired in December, prompting mass protests and political turmoil, while exacerbating the country’s dire economic situation.

“The discovery of yet more mass graves and the reports of continued violations and abuses highlight the horror that has been unfolding in the Kasais over the last nine months,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. If the national government isn’t serious about investigating the crimes, Hussein added, he would urge the International Criminal Court to take up the matter. The Congolese government denied any involvement in the mass graves, and instead blamed militias.

Since 1999, the U.N. has maintained a peacekeeping mission — MONUSCO — in the DRC. With some 22,000 personnel, it’s the U.N.’s largest. But given the sheer expanse of the country, it “has only minimal capacity to respond to civil unrest of widening conflict,” said Hans Hoebeke, a Congo expert with the International Crisis Group.

 

 The Kasai conflict garnered international attention last month after militias abducted and killed two U.N. experts, one American and one Swedish. Since the conflict first escalated in August, 2016, over 400 people have been killed. </s> (AGALAWATTE, Sri Lanka) — Sri Lanka has appealed for outside help as the death toll from floods and mudslides rose Saturday to 100 with 99 others missing.

The Disaster Management Center said more than 27,000 people have been displaced.

The military used large armored vehicles and boats to transport people to safety. But some remained trapped in interior villages where boats have been unable to reach.

At an intersection close to Agalawatte, 98 kilometers (60 miles) south of Colombo, the capital, four bodies in coffins were kept in a house, awaiting boats to be taken to a temple where displaced people have taken refuge.

Separately, five members of the same family who were buried in a mudslide — a husband and wife and three teenage children — were laid to rest in a common grave Saturday afternoon. The family's eldest son was the only survivor because he was not at home when the disaster occurred.

Residents of Wehangalla village near Agalawatte were marooned as floodwaters swamped most of the buildings up to the roof. They had fled to higher terrain, but four people among them died in a mudslide and three others are missing. They complained that government aid still had not reached the area and they were surviving on food provided by those in nearby villagers.

Muslim fishermen from the nearby coastal town of Beruwala came with their boats to help evacuate those stranded while observing the Ramadan fast.

Sri Lanka's government appealed to the United Nations as well as other countries for help with rescue and relief measures.

Mudslides have become common during the monsoon season in the tropical Indian Ocean island as land has been heavily deforested to grow export crops such as tea and rubber.

Last May, a massive landslide killed more than 100 people in central Sri Lanka. </s> COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A massive mound of garbage collapsed in Sri Lanka, killing 19 people, injuring 13 and forcing more than 600 others to flee their homes during festivities to mark the local new year, officials said Saturday.

Soldiers on Saturday were searching the site in Meetotamulla, a town near the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo.

Four people were rescued from underneath the mound, but it was unclear whether any others were buried, said military spokesman Roshan Seneviratne, who said five children were among the dead.

Police spokesman Priyantha Jayakody said police were investigating whether the collapse Friday night was a natural disaster or a deliberate act of sabotage.

The site has been used to dump Colombo’s garbage for the past few years as authorities sought to give the capital a face-lift. But residents living in tiny homes in the area have protested against all the waste being dumped there because of health hazards.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said Saturday that the government would soon remove the garbage dump from the area.

Seneviratne said 625 people whose homes were either destroyed or under threat from the collapse were being housed in nearby schools. The 13 injured were receiving treatment at the Colombo’s main state hospital. </s> IS buried thousands in 72 mass graves, AP finds

HARDAN, Iraq (AP) — Surrounded by smoke and flames, the sound of gunshots echoing around him, the young man crouched in the creek for hours, listening to the men in his family die.

On the other side of the mountain, another survivor peered through binoculars as the handcuffed men of neighboring villages were shot and then buried by a waiting bulldozer. For six days he watched as the extremists filled one grave after another with his friends and relatives.

Between them, the two scenes of horror on Sinjar mountain contain six burial sites and the bodies of more than 100 people, just a small fraction of the mass graves Islamic State extremists have scattered across Iraq and Syria.

This image released by the the Mass Graves Directorate of the Kurdish Regional Government shows a human skull in a mass grave containing Yazidis killed by Islamic State militants in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq in May, 2015. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (Kurdish Mass Graves Directorate via AP)

In exclusive interviews, photos and research, The Associated Press has documented and mapped 72 of the mass graves, the most comprehensive survey so far, with many more expected to be uncovered as the Islamic State group's territory shrinks. In Syria, AP has obtained locations for 17 mass graves, including one with the bodies of hundreds of members of a single tribe all but exterminated when IS extremists took over their region. For at least 16 of the Iraqi graves, most in territory too dangerous to excavate, officials do not even guess the number of dead. In others, the estimates are based on memories of traumatized survivors, Islamic State propaganda and what can be gleaned from a cursory look at the earth.

Still, even the known numbers of victims buried are staggering — from 5,200 to more than 15,000.

Sinjar mountain is dotted with mass graves, some in territory clawed back from IS after the group's onslaught against the Yazidi minority in August 2014; others in the deadly no man's land that has yet to be secured.

The bodies of Talal Murat's father, uncles and cousins lie beneath the rubble of the family farm, awaiting a time when it is safe for surviving relatives to return to the place where the men were gunned down. On Sinjar's other flank, Rasho Qassim drives daily past the graves holding the bodies of his two sons. The road is in territory long since seized back, but the five sites are untouched, roped off and awaiting the money or the political will for excavation, as the evidence they contain is scoured away by the wind and baked by the sun.

"We want to take them out of here. There are only bones left. But they said 'No, they have to stay there, a committee will come and exhume them later,'" said Qassim, standing at the edge of the flimsy fence surrounding one site, where his two sons are buried. "It has been two years but nobody has come."

IS made no attempt to hide its atrocities. In fact it boasted of them. But proving what United Nations officials and others have described as an ongoing genocide — and prosecuting those behind it — will be complicated as the graves deteriorate.

"We see clear evidence of the intent to destroy the Yazidi people," said Naomi Kikoler, who recently visited the region for the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. "There's been virtually no effort to systematically document the crimes perpetrated, to preserve the evidence, and to ensure that mass graves are identified and protected."

Following the release of the AP research, the State Department noted that it is providing assistance to Iraqi authorities for the investigation of mass graves.

"Sadly, we anticipate that additional mass graves will be discovered as additional lands are liberated from Da'esh," State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

Then there are the graves still out of reach. The Islamic State group's atrocities extend well outside the Yazidi region in northern Iraq.

Satellites offer the clearest look at massacres such as the one at Badoush Prison in June 2014 that left 600 male inmates dead. A patch of scraped earth and tire tracks show the likely killing site, according to exclusive photos obtained by the imagery intelligence firm AllSource Analysis.

Of the 72 mass graves documented by AP, the smallest contains three bodies; the largest is believed to hold thousands, but no one knows for sure.

___

ALL THEY COULD DO WAS WATCH THE SLAUGHTER

On the northern flank of Sinjar mountain, five grave sites ring a desert crossroads. It is here that the young men of Hardan village are buried, under thistles and piles of cracked earth. They were killed in the bloody IS offensive of August 2014.

Through his binoculars, Arkan Qassem watched it all. His village, Gurmiz, is just up the slope from Hardan, giving a clear view over the plain below. When the jihadis swept over the area, everyone in Gurmiz fled up the mountaintop for refuge. Then Arkan and nine other men returned to their village with light weapons to try to defend their homes.

Instead, all they could do was watch the slaughter below. Arkan witnessed the militants set up checkpoints, preventing residents from leaving. Women and children were taken away.

Then the killings began. The first night, Arkan saw the militants line up a group of handcuffed men in the headlights of a bulldozer at an intersection, less than a kilometer (half mile) down the slope from Gurmiz. They gunned the men down, then the bulldozer plowed the earth over their bodies.

Over six days, Arkan and his comrades watched helplessly as the fighters brought out three more groups of men — several dozen each, usually with hands bound — to the crossroads and killed them. He didn't always see what they did with the bodies. One time, he saw them lighting a bonfire, but he couldn't see why.

Finally, the jihadis brought in artillery and prepared to make an assault on Gurmiz. Arkan and his comrades fled up the mountain to where their families had taken refuge.

Now, since IS fighters were driven out of the area, the 32-year-old has returned to his home. But he's haunted by the site. As documented by the aid group Yazda, which has mapped the Sinjar sites, the graves are in a rough pentagon flanking the crossroads, largely unprotected. Around one of them is a mesh fence and a wind-battered sign. As Arkan spoke at the site, a shepherd herded his flock nearby.

"I have lots of people I know there. Mostly friends and neighbors," he said. "It's very difficult to look at them every day."

___

"THIS BODY IS WEARING MY FATHER'S CLOTHES"

As IS fighters swarmed into the Sinjar area in early August 2014, Talal fled his town along with his father, mother, four sisters and younger brother. They and dozens of other men, women and children from his extended clan converged on an uncle's farm outside the town of Tel Azer. They prayed it was remote enough to escape the killings that were already engulfing so many Yazidis.

It wasn't.

The jihadis fired at the house from a distance. Then they rolled up in their vehicles and shot one man in the head as they stood in the yard. They surrounded the farmhouse, ordered everyone outside and demanded the impossible: Convert.

The Yazidi faith, one of the region's oldest, has elements of Christianity and Islam but is distinct. Yazidis worship the Peacock Angel, fallen and forgiven by God under their tradition, and their shrines feature carved images of the birds and references to the sun. Muslim extremists condemned them as "devil worshippers" and over the centuries have subjected them to multiple massacres — 72, by the Yazidis' count.

In its own propaganda, the Islamic State group made clear its intention to wipe out the Yazidi community. In an issue of its online English-language magazine Dabiq, it scolded Muslims for allowing the Yazidis to continue existing, calling their ancient religion a form of paganism. It quoted Quranic verses to justify killing the Yazidis unless they become Muslim.

Thwarted in their halfhearted attempt at conversions, the fighters separated about 35 teenage girls and young women from the rest, crammed them into a few cars and drove away. The militants herded the older women and young children into the farmhouse and locked the door.

Then they lined the men and teenaged boys against the wall of the stables — around 40 in all, including Talal.

There were too many of them, too bunched up, to efficiently mow down, so the fighters then ordered them to lie on the ground in a row, Talal said. That was when his uncle told him to make a run for it. Talal bolted into his uncle's hayfield, as did several other men. The militants fired at them, and the bullets ignited the hay, dry from the summer sun. The fire covered Talal's escape, and he took shelter in a nearby creek.

There he hid, listening as the gunmen shot his family to death. He eventually fled toward the mountain, joined by three others who had survived the massacre. Four out of 40.

Back at the farm, the gunmen eventually left and the women and children emerged, looking around with growing horror.

Nouri Murat, Talal's mother, found her husband. His body was untouched, but his head was shattered. Her daughters, she said, were confused at first. "This is strange, this body is wearing my father's clothes," one of them said. As Nouri frantically searched around the property for any surviving menfolk, her 9-year-old daughter Rukhan lay down beside her father's corpse.

Finally, other women persuaded the family to head to the mountain before the Islamic State fighters returned.

As they began the long walk north, Nouri noticed Rukhan's bloody fist. Fearing her daughter was wounded, she pried open the girl's clenched fingers. Inside were a handful of her father's teeth.

___

"THEY DON'T EVEN TRY TO HIDE THEIR CRIMES"

Nearly every area freed from IS control has unmasked new mass graves, like one found by the sports stadium in the Iraqi city of Ramadi. Many of the graves themselves are easy enough to find, most covered with just a thin coating of earth.

"They don't even try to hide their crimes," said Sirwan Jalal, the director of Iraqi Kurdistan's agency in charge of mass graves. "They are beheading them, shooting them, running them over in cars, all kinds of killing techniques, and they don't even try to hide it."

No one outside IS has seen the Iraqi ravine where hundreds of Shiite prison inmates were killed point blank and then torched. Satellite images of scraped dirt along the river point to its location, according to Steve Wood of AllSource. His analysts triangulated survivors' accounts and began to systematically search the desert according to their descriptions of that day, June 10, 2014.

The inmates were separated out by religion, and Shiites were loaded onto trucks, driven for a few kilometers (miles) and forced to line up and count off, according to accounts by 15 survivors gathered by Human Rights Watch. Then they knelt along the edge of the crescent-shaped ravine, according to a report cited by AllSource.

"I was number 43. I heard them say '615,' and then one ISIS guy said, 'We're going to eat well tonight.' A man behind us asked, 'Are you ready?' Another person answered 'Yes,' and began shooting at us with a machine-gun. Then they all started to shoot us from behind, going down the row," according to the Human Rights Watch account of a survivor identified only as A.S.

The men survived by pretending to be dead.

Using their accounts and others, AllSource examined an image from July 17, 2014, that appeared to show the location as described, between a main road and the railway outside Mosul. The bodies are believed to be packed tightly together, side by side in a space approximately the length of two football fields end to end, in what the AllSource analysis described as a "sardine trench." Tire tracks lead to and from the site.

"There's actually earth that has been pushed over and actually moved to cover parts of the ravine. As we look across the entire ravine we only see that in this one location," said Wood. "Ultimately there are many, many more sites across Iraq and Syria that have yet to be either forensically exhumed or be able to be detailed and there's quite a bit more research that needs to take place."

The key, Wood said, is having photos to indicate a grave's location taken soon after its creation.

Justice has been done in at least one IS mass killing — that of about 1,700 Iraqi soldiers who were forced to lie face-down in a ditch and then machine-gunned at Camp Speicher. On Aug. 21, 36 men convicted in those killings were hanged at Iraq's Nasiriyah prison.

But justice is likely to be elusive in areas still firmly under IS control, even though the extremists have filmed themselves committing the atrocities. That's the case for a deep natural sinkhole outside Mosul that is now a pit of corpses. In Syria's Raqqa province, thousands of bodies are believed to have been thrown into the giant al-Houta crevasse.

Conditions in much of Syria remain a mystery. Activists believe there are hundreds of mass graves in IS-controlled areas that can only be explored when fighting stops. By that time, they fear any effort to document the massacres, exhume and identify the remains will become infinitely more complicated.

Working behind IS lines, local residents have informally documented some mass graves, even partially digging some up. Some of the worst have been found in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour. There, 400 members of the Shueitat tribe were found in one grave, just some of the up to 1,000 members of the tribe believed to have been massacred by IS when the militants took over the area, said Ziad Awad, the editor of an online publication on Deir el-Zour called The Eye of the City who is trying to document the graves.

In Raqqa province, the bodies of 160 Syrian soldiers, killed when IS overran their base, were found in seven large pits.

So far, at least 17 mass graves are known, though largely unreachable, in a list put together from AP interviews with activists from Syrian provinces still under IS rule as well as fighters and residents in former IS strongholds.

"This is a drop in an ocean of mass graves expected to be discovered in the future in Syria," said Awad.

___

Butler reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Balint Szlanko and Salar Salim in Irbil, Iraq; Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad; Zeina Karam and Philip Issa in Beirut, and Maya Alleruzzo in Cairo contributed to this story.

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Read previous stories in AP's occasional series "Islamic State: A Savage Legacy" at www.ap.org/explore/a-savage-legacy/

FILE - In this April 3, 2015, file photo, an Iraqi man prays for his slain relative at the site of a mass grave believed to contain the bodies of Iraqi soldiers killed by Islamic State group militants when they overran Camp Speicher military base in Tikrit, Iraq, in June 2014. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File)

In this Wednesday, May 18, 2016 photo, a relative shows a phone picture of Murat Mahmoud during an interview with the Associated Press at Kankhe Camp for the internally displaced in Dahuk, northern Iraq. Murat was killed on Aug. 3, 2014 by Islamic State militants in a massacre of Yazidis and his body is among 40 believed in a mass grave at a farm on Sinjar Mountain. His daughter is still held by the militants. An analysis by The AP has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

FILE - In this June 8, 2016 file photo, Sgt. Ahmed Abdelaziz of Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces shows an Islamic State video of his brother's death at the hands of the IS at a battle position on the southern edge of Fallujah, Iraq. Saad Abdelaziz was killed in June 2014 at Camp Speicher when the militants overran his base. More than 1,000 of Saad's comrades killed in the massacre ended up in a mass grave nearby. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File)

This image posted online by Islamic State militants on June 14, 2014 shows Iraqi cadets captured by IS moments before they were killed in Tikrit, Iraq. Their bodies are believed to be in one of the many mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 such graves in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (Militant photo via AP)

In this May 17, 2016 photo, Sirwan Jalal, Director of Mass Graves for the Kurdish Regional Government, points to an image of the site of a mass grave during an interview with the Associated Press in Irbil, northern Iraq. An analysis by The AP has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

In this May 19, 2016 photo, the site where dozens of Yazidi men were killed in August 2014 is fenced off in Hardan, northern Iraq. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

FILE - In this Dec. 22, 2014, file photo, Kurdish Peshmerga forces inspect a site marked in Kurdish with a sign reading, "Kurdish mass grave,¿ in Hardan village in northern Iraq. A handful of Yazidis who fled this tiny northern Iraqi hamlet when Islamic State militants overran it in August 2014 have returned after Kurdish fighters drove out the extremists. (AP Photo/Dalton Bennett, File)

In this May 19, 2016 photo, Arkan Qassim, center, stands at the site where he witnessed the killing dozens of Yazidi men including two sons of Rasho Qassim, right, in August 2014 in Hardan, northern Iraq. Both survivors say they simply want the graves exhumed. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

This photo released by the the Mass Graves Directorate of the Kurdish Regional Government shows a skeleton exhumed from a mass grave containing Yazidis killed by Islamic State militants in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (Kurdish Mass Graves Directorate via AP)

In this May 19, 2016 photo, Arkan Qassim, center, looks at the site where he witnessed the killing dozens of Yazidi men in August 2014 in Hardan, northern Iraq. Rasho Qassim, right, lost two sons in the massacre. Both survivors say they simply want the graves exhumed. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

FILE - In this April 19, 2016 file photo, an Iraqi security forces forensic team works at the site of a mass grave believed to contain the bodies of Iraqi civilians, security forces and members of their families, including women and children, killed by Islamic State group militants at the stadium area in Ramadi, Iraq. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. Only a handful have been exhumed. (AP Photo, File)

This image released by the the Mass Graves Directorate of the Kurdish Regional Government shows a human jaw bone exhumed from a mass grave containing Yazidis killed by Islamic State militants in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq in 2015. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (Kurdish Mass Graves Directorate via AP)

In this May 18, 2016 photo, Nouri, right, and her son speak to the Associated Press at Kankhe Camp for the internally displaced in Dahuk, northern Iraq. Her husband, Murat Mahmoud, was killed on Aug. 3, 2014, by Islamic State militants in a massacre of Yazidis. Their bodies are buried in a mass grave at the farm where they died, the family said. An analysis by The AP has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) </s> KIGALI, Rwanda — Mass graves that authorities say could contain more than 2,000 bodies have been discovered in Rwanda nearly a quarter-century after the country's genocide, and further graves are being sought nearby.

The new discovery is being called the most significant in a long time in this East African nation that is still recovering from the 1994 killings of more than 800,000 people.

Some Rwandans are shocked and dismayed that residents of the community outside the capital, Kigali, where the mass graves were found kept quiet about them for so many years.

"Those who participated in the killing of our relatives don't want to tell us where they buried them. How can you reconcile with such people?" asked a tearful France Mukantagazwa. She told The Associated Press she lost her father and other relatives in the genocide and believes their bodies are in the newly found graves.

The discovery of the graves in Gasabo district came just days after Rwanda marked 24 years since the mass killings of ethnic Tutsi and moderate ethnic Hutus.

"It is very disturbing that every now and then mass graves are discovered of which the now-free perpetrators never bothered to reveal to bereaved families so that they can get closure," the daily newspaper The New Times said in an editorial this week.

"Definitely some very cruel people still live in our midst," it added.

Between 2,000 and 3,000 people are thought to be buried in the graves based on the number of area residents who went missing during the genocide, Rashid Rwigamba, an official with the genocide survivors' organization Ibuka, told AP.

The information leading to the discovery came from a local landlord who at first refused to answer questions about the suspected mass graves until threatened with arrest, Rwigamba said. The landlord was later arrested, suspected of taking part in the killings and accused of knowing where people were buried all along, he added.

Houses and toilets that had been built on top of the graves have been destroyed to make way for the search. "The exercise is ongoing and we have identified another house we suspect was built on a piece of land where victims were buried," Rwigamba said.

Bodies found so far include those of babies, based on the clothing that has been found, he said.
Forensic anthropologists from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, report that more than 90 sets of human remains have been discovered near the town of Mannar. The mass grave is situated in an area that saw heavy fighting during the country's civil war.