Mass grave
The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of execution,[1] although an exact definition is not unanimously agreed upon.
For example, if an epidemic occurs during winter, flies are less likely to infest corpses, reducing the risk of outbreaks of dysentery, diarrhea, diphtheria, or tetanus, which decreases the urgency to use mass graves.
[9] In Paris, the practice of mass burial, and in particular, the condition of the Cimetière des Innocents, led Louis XVI to eliminate Parisian cemeteries.
[10] A mass grave containing at least 300 bodies of victims of a Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' in the year 1238, was discovered during an excavation in 2005, in Yaroslavl, Russia.
[11] A mass grave containing at least 47 soldiers that were brutally massacred following the Battle of Lützen of the Thirty Years' War, in the 17th century, which was Europe's deadliest religious conflict, was exhumed and reported in 2017 of PLOS One magazine.
[20] These testimonies serve the purpose of helping geophysicists, archaeologists and forensic scientists to locate graves in order to identify bodies and allow families to rebury their relatives.
[19] In the summer of 2008, information from these testimonies was used to unearth a 4 meter long square grave containing five skeletons near the town of San Juan del Monte.
The victims of the Huế massacre buried in mass graves included government officials, innocent civilians, women and children.
Survivors alleged that approximately 400 wounded Egyptians were buried alive outside the captured El Arish International Airport, and that 150 prisoners in the mountains of the Sinai were run over by Israeli tanks.
Following extensive media coverage of these mass graves, the Chilean military decided to exhume the bodies from Lonquén, Yumbel, and Santiago's General Cemetery.
[58] On the other hand, during the Maratha, Santalaris and Aloda massacre, 126 Turkish Cypriots including elderly people and children[59] were murdered by EOKA B and the inhabitants of the three villages were buried in mass graves with a bulldozer.
[56] Mass grave mapping teams have located 125 Khmer Rouge prison facilities and corresponding gravesites to date in Cambodia while researching the Killing Fields.
[62] On at 3:21 AM on 24 March 1976, the media told the people of Argentina that the country was now under the "operational control of the Junta of General Commanders of the Armed Forces.
Three mass graves are known to exist on Argentinian police and military premises although other bodies were disposed of through cremation or by being airdropped over the Atlantic Ocean.
[67] On 1 April 2022, following the Russian withdrawal, video footage was posted to social media, that showed mass civilian casualties.
By 9 April, Ukrainian forensic investigators had begun recovering bodies from mass graves, such as at the church of Andrew the Apostle.
[69] On 21 April, Human Rights Watch published an extensive report that summarized their own investigation in Bucha, implicating Russian troops in summary executions, other unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, and torture.
[73] In late December 2022, based on the discovery of 10,300 new mass graves, the Associated Press estimated that the true death toll may be up to three times that figure.
Most of the dead showed signs of violent death and 30 presented traces of torture and summary execution, including ropes around their necks, bound hands, broken limbs and genital amputation.
[84][85] In July 2010, a mass grave was discovered next to the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, containing the corpses of 80 military officers executed during the Red Terror of 1918–1921.
[97] As of September 2024[update], no bodies have been exhumed from the suspected gravesites due to a lack community consensus on whether to investigate detected anomalies at the risk of disturbing burials.
[103] Because of the excessive number of deaths and extreme poverty, many families were unable to provide a wake or proper burial for loved ones and used mass graves instead.
[105] Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, thousands of bodies were left in the streets on Port-au-Prince, exposed to the sun and beginning to decompose and smell.
The burial of unidentified corpses in mass graves rather than familial plots severs this spiritual link between the living and dead.
[109] In several territories, the amount of death caused by the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was beyond the capacities of funeral industry, requiring the use of mass graves.
Traditional burial practices exacerbated spread of the disease,[115] an Ebola victim is most contagious in the moments and days after death and contact with infected bodily fluids from a recently dead Ebola victim's body carries an extremely high risk of transmission,[116] but burial practices that were seen as disrespectful exacerbated distrust of foreign medical workers.
[117] Reports of mass graves having been dug for COVID-19 victims have been made about Iran, using satellite pictures of sites near Qom as evidence.
[119][120][121] On 12 March 2020 The Washington Post published satellite images and analysis provided by Maxar Technologies, saying that vast burial pits were being excavated near Qom, said to be used to accommodate people who died of COVID in the city.
[127][128][129] Following the rise of deaths and morgues being overwhelmed, New York City temporarily allowed for mass graves on Hart Island for unclaimed bodies.
[130][131] In Brazil, the city of Manaus, in the state of Amazonas, used mass graves[132][133] after a large spike in deaths attributed to the pandemic.
