Iraqi Health Minister Adila Hammoud told reporters that the remains of another 470 victims were exhumed from a mass grave near Tikrit recently.
Iraqi officials believe as many as 1,700 Iraqis were slaughtered by ISIS in the Speicher massacre last year in Tikrit.
Most of the victims were young Shiites in soccer shirts.
ISIS forces reportedly murdered hundreds of “security forces” in the massacre.
They filmed the massacre and posted photos and video online.
The Islamist group ISIS loaded the “security forces” (Iraqi men, boys and security officials) onto SEVERAL trucks.
If you look at the picture you’ll notice the “security forces” were dressed in pedestrian clothes.
The prisoners were then led to a ditch outside Tikrit.
(The Standard)
The victims were slaughtered like animals in a ditch.
The AFP reported:
Iraq has exhumed the remains of 470 people believed to have been executed by jihadists near Tikrit last year in what is known as the Speicher massacre, the health minister said Thursday.
“We have exhumed the bodies of 470 Speicher martyrs from burial sites in Tikrit,” Adila Hammoud said at a press conference in Baghdad.
In June 2014, armed men belonging or allied to the Islamic State group abducted hundreds of young, mostly Shiite recruits from Speicher military base, just outside the city of Tikrit.
They were then lined up in several locations and executed one by one, as shown in pictures and footage later released by IS.
Some were pushed into the Tigris river, others hastily buried in locations that were discovered when government and allied forces retook Tikrit from the jihadists about two months ago.
The highest estimate for the number of people killed in one of the worst atrocities committed by IS stands at 1,700.