Almost 600 exhumed at Iraq mass grave

Iraq has exhumed the remains of 597 people believed to have been executed by jihadists in the so-called Speicher massacre.

"The remains of 597 Speicher martyrs have been exhumed," human rights minister Mohammed al-Bayati told journalists in Baghdad.

In June 2014, armed men belonging or allied to the Islamic State jihadist group captured hundreds of young, mostly Shi'ite recruits from Speicher military base, near the northern city of Tikrit.

They were then lined up in several locations and executed, as shown in pictures and footage later released by IS.

Some were pushed into the Tigris river, others hastily buried in locations that were discovered when government and allied forces retook Tikrit from the jihadists in April.

The highest estimate for the number of people killed in one of the worst atrocities committed by IS stands at 1700.

Combined with a call by the country's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, for Iraqis to take up arms against IS, the Speicher massacre played a key role in the mass recruitment of Shi'ite volunteers to fight the jihadists.