Khairi Ali Ibrahim watched on as teams of workers exhumed a mass grave of Yazidis in Kocho village, south of Sinjar. “It was difficult for the Yazidis," he said. "We waited for about five years for this step.”

Ibrahim, the director of the Yazidi Organization for Documentation in Sinjar, said the exhumation, conducted in March, was part of an initiative by a national team of Iraqi parliamentarians and politicians and UN representatives to exhume mass graves and to promote accountability for crimes committed by the Islamic State (IS).

On Feb. 27, the national team announced its first list of individuals found in the Yazidi mass grave. It included 62 names, all of them male.

At a Baghdad press conference, the national team said that 73 mass Yazidi graves had been found, and 13 of them exhumed. The remains of 347 victims have been retrieved from the graves. The team noted that the official funeral processions will take place March 12. The team noted that the burials will take place within the two following days. However, all ceremonies were postponed until further notice due to the outbreak of COVID-19.