Fawaz Abdulabbas, deputy head of the Iraq program for the International Commission on Missing Persons, which assists Iraqi government officials with excavating mass graves, said no current total exists of mass graves in Iraq. Adil Amash, left, and Hussein Hassan, who have been digging at the mass grave to try to find missing relatives, show Sunni militia member Sgt. Adil Amash, left, and Hussein Hassan, who have been digging at the mass grave to try to find missing relatives, show Sunni militia member Sgt. In addition to risking their lives, untrained volunteers excavating mass graves risk contaminating them, Abdulabbas said. That’s what happened in 2003, he said, when families dug at mass graves south of Baghdad from a 1991 Shiite uprising, disrupting the site.

Source: Los Angeles Times March 11, 2017 12:01 UTC