Iraq hanged 36 ISIS militants sentenced to death over the mass killing of soldiers at Camp Speicher in Tikrit near Baghdad in 2014.
This is the highest number of militants that the Iraqi government has executed in a day since ISIS militants took control of parts of northern and western Iraq two years ago.
The move has been described as a first step towards a long-sought justice for the families of the deceased.
The execution was announced by Iraqi Justice Minister Haidar Zamili in a statement from the city of Nasiriya in Dhi Qar province, reported local news channel Arabi21.
This video shows the bodies of the victims getting exhumed last year.
A Brutal Massacre
Approximately 1700 soldiers, mainly Shi’ites, were killed in June 2014 after they fled from Camp Speicher, a former US military base, north of Tikrit (which is also Saddam Hussein’s home town) when it was overrun by ISIS.
The militants rounded up, shot, choked and beheaded the soldiers, filming the massacre with brazen glee. They released the video of the executions, revealing the scope of atrocity that was meted out.
The footage showed gruesome killings, with soldiers piled up in trucks before getting shot one by one.
The killing went on into the night and while some bodies were thrown in the nearby Tigris River, some others were dumped in mass graves.
Around 600 bodies were exhumed, however, some bodies have still not been found.
In another video released by the militants in July 2015, an unidentified ISIS leader in military uniform made a clear announcement:
This is a message I address to the whole world and especially to the Rafidha (rejectors, referring to Shi’ite muslims here)..., I tell them we are coming.
Ali Hussein Kadhim, one of the only known survivors of the attacks told The New York Times that ISIS perpetrators separated the soldiers by sect, before executing them.
“I saw my daughter in my mind, saying, ‘Father, father,’ ” he said.
He recalled the day saying that he felt a bullet pass by his head and pretended to be shot. He survived on insects and plans for three days before planning his escape.
His witness accounts are among the only ones that have helped reconstruct the horrors of the day. Families of those killed in the massacre have been demanding justice since then. For some of them, Sunday marked as a closure.
(With inputs from Reuters and The New York Times.)
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