Iraqi forces on Tuesday found two mass graves in the northern city of Al-Shirqat a day after the army unearthed a mass grave south of Mosul containing at least 100 corpses, most of them decapitated.
There were 40 bodies mainly of women and children in the mass graves discovered in the centre of Al-Shirquat, according to officials.
Iraqi troops made the grim discovery while they were clearing the city of of shells, local government head Ali Dahduuh told Kurdish broadcaster Rudaw.
“One of the mass graves was found in an old storage that contained 10 bodies, and the second one was nearby and contained 30 bodies,” Dahduuh said.
Al-Shirquat, in Saladdin province, was under the control of the Islamic State jihadist group before its liberation by Iraqi forces in late September.
Iraqi investigators were on Tuesday probing a mass grave in Hamam Alil that was discovered the previous day by Iraqi troops advancing further into territory near the Islamic State jihadist group's stronghold of Mosul in northern Nineveh governorate.
The mass grave is located near Hamam Alil’s faculty of agriculture and most of the bodies are missing the head or limbs, according to Iraqi police.
As many as 150 people may have been buried in the mass grave.The identity of the victims is unclear. But video footage provided by the Iraqi federal police on Tuesday shows civilian clothes and personal items, including a child's soft toy.
The victims had been blindfolded with their hands and feet bound.
“This crime against humanity cannot be described in words,” says a police officer in the video.
Associated Press footage from the site showed bones and decomposed bodies among scraps of clothing and plastic bags dug out of the ground by a bulldozer after Iraqi troops noticed a putrid stench while advancing into Hamam al-Alil on Monday.
Hamam Alil, which is around 30 kilometres from Mosul, was liberated by the Iraqi army on Monday.
The campaign by Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces to dislodge IS from Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city and the group's last major urban stronghold in the country, began on 17 October.
IS militants have carried out a series of massacres since seizing large swathes of southern and central Iraq in mid-2014, often documenting the atrocities with photos and videos circulated online.
The group has killed thousands of people in summary executions and extrajudicial killings in the areas of Iraq and Syria under its control.
