Iraqi forces which retook Tikrit from the Islamic State group found burial sites Wednesday believed to hold victims of a June massacre in which 1,700 army cadets were executed

Iraqi forces which retook Tikrit from the Islamic State group found burial sites Wednesday believed to hold victims of a June massacre in which 1,700 army cadets were executed.

The Speicher massacre—named after the nearby base from which the army recruits were abducted—stoked widespread anger against ISIL and helped rally support to battle the terrorists.

Interior Minister Mohammed al-Ghaban told AFP that a burial site had been discovered in a freshly retaken palace complex on the banks of the Tigris river.

He was speaking at a concrete waterfront post of Tikrit’s water police building, where the wall was stained by blood that had run down into the river.

“This place reminds us of those who were unjustly killed, it reminds us of the massacre,” Ghaban said, sobbing. “They were innocent people.” “Today the cowards were defeated... We will hunt them down wherever they are. We will bring security and peace to all of Iraq,” he said.

The site is known among fighters as “Al-Madhbah”, an Arabic word for a place where slaughter is carried out.

Pictures of the executions released by ISIL showed the police building and several recruits in plainclothes being frogmarched to the waterfront, shot and pushed into the river.

“We found dozens of ID cards in a pile of waste near the site,” said policeman Hussein al-Rikabi, who took AFP to the site. He said the documents matched the names of Speicher recruits known to have been executed or who had gone missing since terrorists took over Tikrit in June 2014.