Mass graves present obstacles

BEIRUT — Syrians working to uncover mass graves in an area once ruled by the Islamic State group need help to preserve evidence, identify human remains and shed more light on the horrors perpetrated by the militants, an international watchdog said Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch said thousands of bodies — of civilians slain by the extremists, residents killed in airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition and of IS fighters — remain to be recovered in several mass graves in and around the city of Raqqa. The appeal came in a new report released Tuesday by the New York-based group.

Local members of the Raqqa Civil Council, a governing body set up by U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led forces, are “struggling to cope with the logistical challenges of collecting and organizing information” on the bodies uncovered and providing it to families searching for missing or dead relatives, HRW said.

Raqqa was the extremists’ de facto capital and the seat of their self-proclaimed caliphate, which at the height of their power in 2014 stretched across a third of both Syria and Iraq. Since then an array of Syrian and Iraqi forces have driven IS from virtually all the territory it once held, but the group is still present in areas along the border.

The extremist group, which attracted fighters from around the world, carried out mass killings and other atrocities, including public beheadings. Women and men accused of adultery were stoned to death, while men believed to be gay were thrown from the tops of buildings and then pelted with stones.

Human Rights Watch said identifying missing people and preserving evidence for possible prosecutions is critical for Syria’s future.

“Raqqa city has at least nine mass graves, each one estimated to have dozens, if not hundreds, of bodies, making exhumations a monumental task,” said Priyanka Motaparthy, acting emergencies director at HRW.

“Without the right technical assistance, these exhumations may not provide families with the answers they have been waiting for and could damage or destroy evidence crucial to future justice efforts,” she added.