ERBIL — In a special ceremony on Wednesday, the bodies of 41 Kurdish Yezidi women were laid to rest, years after they were abducted and massacred by Islamic State (IS) militants in Sinjar.

The event came after the Martyrs Monument in Baghdad on Monday handed over the remains of the 41 Yezidi women to their families in a ceremony.

During the ceremony, the Iraqi health minister pointed out that the forensic directorate, responsible for scrutinizing the recovered bodies, continues its meticulous work on all remains retrieved from the graves, ensuring a thorough identification process.

"The forensic directorate continues to conduct examinations on all the bodies that are removed from the graves," the health minister noted.

The IS perpetrated brutal crimes against the Yezidi Kurds in Sinjar in 2014, resulting in the killing of thousands and leaving thousands more missing. Reports indicate that authorities have identified a total of 89 Yezidi mass graves, with 39 already excavated, revealing the remains of 160 Yezidi men and women. The identification process involves sending 500 bodies to the Baghdad forensic department.

Under the oppressive rule of IS jihadists, Yezidi citizens were mercilessly killed due to their distinctive ethnic background. The extremists abducted 6,417 Yezidis, with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) successfully rescuing 3,562 of them. However, the fate of the remaining abductees remains unknown.

IS also targeted and destroyed 68 Yezidi shrines, compelling nearly 400,000 Yezidi individuals to seek refuge in the Kurdistan Region. To this day, the majority of them remain internally displaced, underscoring the enduring impact of the traumatic events that occurred in 2014.