Teams in Iraq exhume mass grave of soldiers

Iraqi forensic teams in the newly-recaptured city of Tikrit have started exhuming bodies from mass graves believed to contain some of the hundreds of soldiers killed by Islamic State (IS) militants last year, a government spokesman said yesterday.

Kamil Amin from Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry said the work started on Monday on eight locations inside Tikrit’s complex of presidential palaces, where much of the killing is believed to have taken place.

IS militants overran Saddam Hussein’s hometown last June, capturing around 1,700 soldiers as they were trying to flee Camp Speicher, an air base previously used by US troops on the outskirts of Tikrit.