The New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) says militants of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization killed more than 300 former Iraqi police officers and buried them in a mass grave outside the city of Mosul.
HRW said on November 16 that the mass grave had been discovered near the village of Hammam al-Alil, about 30 kilometers southeast of Mosul, on November 12.
"This is another piece of evidence of the horrific mass murder by [IS] of former law-enforcement officers in and around Mosul," Joe Stork, HRW’s deputy Middle East director, was quoted as saying.
HRW also reported that locals in the village told them that IS militants took away some 2,000 civilians when they left the town and retreated toward Mosul on November 7.
Iraqi forces, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, and their allies are conducting a major offensive to drive IS out of Mosul, which is the last major Iraqi city under their control.