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AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File
Iraqi security forces and allied Shiite militiamen celebrate in central Tikrit after Islamic State troops were driven out the city late last month.
# Tikrit
Mass graves containing hundreds of soldiers found in Iraqi city
Forensic teams are examining the remains.
AN IRAQI OFFICIAL says forensic teams in the newly liberated city of Tikrit have started exhuming bodies from a mass grave believed to contain hundreds of soldiers killed by Islamic State militants last year.
Kamil Amin, from Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry, says work started on yesterday on eight locations inside Tikrit’s complex of presidential palaces, where much of the killing is believed to have taken place.
Amin told The Associated Press at least 12 bodies have been exhumed.
IS militants overran Saddam Hussein’s hometown last June, capturing around 1,700 soldiers as they were trying to leave Camp Speicher, an air base previously used by U.S. troops on the outskirt of Tikrit.
IS claimed to have killed the troops shortly afterward and posted videos purported to show their mass killings.
Read: Saddam Hussein’s tomb destroyed amid fighting… but his body might not be there >
