A couple of months ago in a village called Salog in northern Iraq, workers in

masks and white protective suits were digging.

NPR International correspondent Jane Arraf, who's covered the Middle East for years,

was there recording and described what she was seeing. One of the men is

shoveling the dirt into this big rectangular sifter and then fine pieces of dirt

come out and he flips the gravel over. The other one is now going through it by

hand trying to make sure that they don't miss any of the bones.

Bones. The men digging were Iraqi laborers working with investigators from

the United Nations and an International Missing Persons Commission.

Said Maraud, the brother of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Maraud, was waiting to

learn if their mother's body was buried there in a mass grave known as the

Mother's grave. It's believed to contain the remains of dozens of women, some

pregnant who were killed by ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

My mother was the most peaceful charitable person in the world. If she saw a poor

person and we had only one piece of bread she would cut it into half and give it

to him. We needed to have her with us longer.

Maraud's mother and the others thought to be buried here were Yazidis, an

ancient religious minority targeted for genocide by ISIS. In 2014 the U.S.

launched a military effort to protect the Yazidis. Today I authorized two

operations in Iraq. Targeted airstrikes to protect our American personnel and a

humanitarian effort to help save thousands of Iraqi civilians who were

trapped on a mountain without food and water and facing almost certain death.

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