(23 Feb 2025)
IRAQ YAZIDI FUNERALS
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
LENGTH: 2:45
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sinjar, Iraq – 22 February 2025
1. Various of woman mourning her loved one
2. Security personnel trying to slow mourners from advancing towards burial process
3. Various of women mourning near graves
4. Wide of people in graveyard
5. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Ilyas Salih, Yazidi survivor from Kocho village in Sinjar:
"I am now standing next to the grave of my son, Ghassan Ilyas Salih. Six members of my family are buried here, including my mother, my son and four of my brothers."
6. Yazidi man beating on daf as part of funeral rituals
7. Various of Yazidis mourning their loved ones
8. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Ilyas Salih, Yazidi survivor from Kocho village in Sinjar:
"Every time there’s a ceremony marking the return of martyrs’ remains, we feel deep pain and sorrow because our wounds start to bleed again."
9. Various of funeral, people carrying coffins to graveyard
10. Yazidi women burning incense
11. People carrying coffins with victims’ pictures
12. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Abd Khadir, Yazidi mourner from Sinjar:
"Until today, the fate of the (missing) Yazidis is still unknown. The fate of many children and women is still unknown. The remains in mass graves have not been exhumed yet."
13. Yazidis performing traditional funeral rituals
14. Casket of victim brought into hall
15. Man crying
16. Various of Iraqi army soldiers standing next to coffins
17. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Khalaf Qaraw, Yazidi mourner from Sinjar:
"The Yazidi community is against the general amnesty law. We are not against the innocent ones (being released), but we are against those whose hands were stained with the blood of Yazidis and Iraqis in general."
18. Various of women walking behind coffins
19. People carrying coffins to graveyard
STORYLINE:
Hundreds of people participated in an official burial ceremony for Yazidi victims that the Iraqi government confirmed were killed by the Islamic State group in Iraq’s northern district of Sinjar in 2014.
The remains of 32 victims were found and exhumed from a mass grave site in Sinjar and were identified through DNA tests in Baghdad.
Ilyas Salih, who survived the onslaught by IS more than a decade ago, buried the remains of six family members on Saturday.
"Every time there’s a ceremony marking the return of martyrs’ remains, we feel deep pain and sorrow because our wounds start to bleed again," he said.
Relatives and government officials attended the funeral procession and the burial ceremony at the cemetery near the Martyrs’ Monument in Sinjar.
In 2019, Iraq began DNA testing to identify the remains of bodies found in mass graves believed to contain the Yazidi victims of Islamic State group massacres.
Saturday’s ceremony marks the seventh such reburial of victims identified through DNA testing.
It comes one month after the Iraqi parliament passed a general amnesty law that is seen as benefiting Sunni detainees and giving a pass to people involved in corruption and embezzlement.
"The Yazidi community is against the general amnesty law. We are not against the innocent ones (being released), but we are against those whose hands were stained with the blood of Yazidis and Iraqis in general," said Khalaf Qaraw, a Yazidi mourner from Sinjar.
IS militants attacked the Yazidi community’s heartland at the foot of Sinjar Mountain in August 2014, killing hundreds and abducting thousands, more than half of whom were women and girls.
The Iraqi government and the United Nations have called the attacks a genocide.
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