Gruesome mass grave containing 500 people murdered by Isis brutes uncovered in prison near Mosul
The grisly find came after Iraqi forces ousted the terror group from the jail
IRAQI soldiers have unearthed a mass grave at a prison near Mosul containing the bodies of hundreds of people executed by Isis brutes.
It's just the latest grisly discovery made by home forces as they finally push the terror group back after more than two years of heavy fighting.
Isis reportedly killed up to 600 people after seizing Badush in 2014, and was also said to have held hundreds of kidnapped women from Iraq's Yazidi minority at the town's prison.
The Iraqi military said forces from the Hashed al-Shaabi - an umbrella group of pro-government forces - were among the units that recaptured the prison from the jihadists.
Hashed forces found "a large mass grave containing the remains of around 500 civilian prisoners who were executed by (Isis) gangs after they controlled the prison during their occupation of Mosul," the military said.
The Hashed did not say how they reached that figure, but it is in keeping with accounts of Isis killing hundreds of inmates at the jail.
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Isis gunmen executed hundreds of inmates from the prison on June 10, 2014, forcing them to kneel along a nearby ravine and then shooting them with assault rifles.
Most of those mercilessly executed were said to have been members of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, whom Isis considers heretics.
The terror group's abuses at the jail did not end with executions.
Iraqi lawmaker Vian Dakhil said the jihadists also held more than 500 Yazidi women at Badush as sex slaves.
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The Badush site is not the first mass grave to be found during the Mosul campaign, in which Iraqi forces recaptured areas around the country's second city before battling Isis inside it.
Iraqi forces found one in the Hamam al-Alil area south of Mosul in November that an official said appeared to hold the remains of at least 25 bodies.
And earlier this year, Iraqi forces retook an area containing a sinkhole known as the Khasfah, which could be the largest mass grave of the war with IS.
Local residents said that Isis used it as an execution site and a mass grave where they would dispose of victims.
Isis overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since regained most of the territory they lost.
A hospital in Erbil has received as many as 120 wounded every day since the beginning of the operation to retake western Mosul.
Injured civilians, who managed to escape the ongoing bloodshed are being treated in the hospital, but many others have died trying to do so.
Civilians say they are suffering at the hands of the both warring sides - as terrorists deliberately hide among them in order to attract US-backed coalition strikes and thus inflict as many casualties as possible among the population.
“We were five families together when ISIS fighters came to our house and went on the roof. We asked to be allowed to leave– we knew a jet would bomb the house, but they said no,” an injured.
“The Iraqi army came and shot at our house with an Abrams tank. Seven civilians were killed and their bodies are still there. Everyone else fled —children, women, people with injuries — everyone ran where they could.”
“If Isis has one great talent – it is their ability to kill people. If they take an area with a population of a thousand, in six months there will only be 500 left,” the man added.
“Ask anyone in this hospital — and every single one will tell you that we were Isis’s human shield.”