On a mild October morning in 2016, gun-toting Daesh terrorists knocked on doors at the Wadi Hajar neighbourhood in southern Mosul.

Mahaa Mohammed Saleh, now 52, remembers the day as clear as daylight. 

“It was October 24…they (Daesh terrorists) were looking for anyone who had previously served in the Iraqi security forces,” Mahaa tells TRT World, recalling the fateful day that would change the lives of many Iraqis. 

Mahaa had always feared this day would come, as she had heard stories about Daesh – which had by then overran large parts of Iraq and Syria – targetting government employees, including security personnel. 

Her husband, Fathi Ahmed Hassan, was in the local police’s First Emergency Regiment before the Daesh took over Mosul, but he had refused to go into hiding despite his family’s pleas. 

Hundreds of men were rounded up, blindfolded and divided into two groups. One group, including Fathi, was taken to a local school premises.

Around noon, the men were herded into three trucks and driven away. As Mahaa cried in agony, one Daesh member told her that Fathi would be released in “two or three days”. 

Fathi, just 42, never returned. Nor did any of the 700 men abducted that day from the locality.

Most of the men were presumed to have been executed by the Daesh, which ran a campaign of terror before it was defeated in 2017 by Iraqi forces with crucial support from Türkiye, which carried out multiple cross-border operations to eliminate the terror group, as well as the US-led coalition.

This month, Iraqi officials began excavating a sink pit at Al Khasfa, described as “the largest mass grave in Iraq, and possibly in the world” by Ninevah governor Abdul Qadir al Dakhil, who believes that it contains nearly 20 thousand bodies dumped by Daesh.

The excavation has opened old wounds for hundreds of families, but also given them hope of finally finding closure. 

“When we heard the news about excavating the mass grave, grief and mourning returned to every house with a missing person,” Mahaa says. 

“We only wish they would find their bones…The fate of our men is still unknown. We neither buried them, nor do we know if they are alive and waiting to return.”

The excavation is considered an important step towards uncovering the fate of the disappeared, providing closure to the families of the victims, and ensuring dignified burials of the dead.

A dark chapter

Al Khasfa - a deep natural geological sinkhole located about 20 kilometres south of Mosul – became Daesh’s dumping ground for bodies due to the rugged terrain surrounding the pit. 

Between 2014 and 2017, the terror group — also known by other acronyms like ISIS and ISIL – executed thousands of people for their affiliation with state institutions and their opposition to the group’s radical views on religion and morality.

Incidentally,  officials have identified more than 130 mass graves in the Nineveh Governorate, where Al Khasfa is located. While 94 of these graves have been excavated, 38 remain to be dug.

The Mass Graves Directorate, however, says that the process of finding human remains and identifying the dead at Al Khasfa will be long and painful, made even more difficult by the presence of sulfuric water and the depth of the pit.

After the first stage of the operation – limited to collecting visible human remains – officials will start collecting DNA samples from families of suspected victims, Ahmed Qusay Al Asadi, the head of the excavation team, tells TRT World.

But patience is running thin among the grieving families.

Last week, family members of the missing – most of them women from the Wadi Hajar neighbourhood – held a rally in Mosul demanding that the process be expedited. 

“We just want the procedure to move faster so that families can finally have peace,” says Shaima Ahmed Mohammed, 45, whose husband Saddam Awad also went missing on October 23, 2016.

“Even a single bone to bury would be enough…They are martyrs now and forever—heroes who gave their lives for their honour, dignity, and homeland. They never abandoned their land,” she tells TRT World, recalling the traffic police officer targeted by Daesh.

Funding remains a big challenge for the gargantuan task, which could take months and require hundreds of people to complete.

“There is also an indication that Daesh planted unexploded devices like mines among the bodies”, says al Asadi. These will have to be removed or defused before the human remains can be retrieved.

Also, more studies are required before his team can dig deeper and exhume bodies at the giant sinkhole, about 150 metres deep and 110 metres wide.

A wait without end

Mosul, a vibrant city before Daesh’s takeover, was ravaged by the terrorist group, which destroyed libraries, education institutes and antiquities. 

The group burnt thousands of priceless books and manuscripts in the Mosul library - including some dating back to the Ottoman period.

But nothing could prepare the city for the brutality that was to be unleashed on the people. 

One of those who still remembers the horrors is 84-year-old Harbiya Hassan, whose 32-year-old son Adnan Hadi was shot in the leg and then drowned in a fish tank by the terrorist outfit.

A video of his execution was also circulated by Daesh as a warning to all those who opposed its ideology.

And Adnan was one of Daesh’s fiercest critics, and had once publicly vowed to “wash Mosul with Dettol after it’s liberated,” referring to a widely-used anti-septic disinfectant.  

Harbiya recalls that even when terrorists raided their home on October 28, Adnan had confronted the Daesh and told them that “their days will be over soon”. 

The mother says that she has been waiting for all these years, not knowing what happened to him, but was prepared for the worst now. 

“I just hope to find my son’s body and have a grave for us to visit and mourn,” Harbiya tells TRT World. 

In another part of Mosul, the “reopening of the Al Khasfa site opened up old wounds” for Samaher Jassim Mohammed, 47, whose husband Ali Audou was taken away by Daesh terrorists on September 19, 2014.

By that time, stories of the outfit’s brutal tactics had been well documented in the media – beheading of captives, enslavement and rape of women throughout the area under the Daesh’s control.

Ali, 55, was a police officer in Baghdad but had come home to Mosul on vacation. He decided to stay back and take care of his family after the city was overrun by Daesh.

“Daesh took him on Friday from the doorway of our home. They said: ‘We want your husband for two to three days, and we will return him to you’. But he has been missing for 12 years now,” Samaher tells TRT World.

Living in a rented house with four children, Samaher describes her struggles to feed her family after the only earning member was taken away. Her youngest daughter was born three months after Ali was abducted.

But the only thing that matters now for the family is giving him a proper burial.

Across Mosul, as well as in other parts of Iraq, the excavation at Al Khasfa has brought back painful memories for many families. 

But it also promises an end to years of waiting for hundreds of people – mothers, wives and children — to finally have confirmation of what they had been fearing all along: their loved ones are not coming home. 

But Shaima Ahmed Mohammed is hoping that finding her husband’s remains would finally put the family at peace and help them resume normal lives. 

“My children were in school, but after their father was taken, they had to leave. One sold tissues, another collected cardboard, and another sold water. Now they work as construction labourers instead of being in classrooms.”

“I only want my husband’s remains….(and then) I hope my children can finally return to their studies.”