Barzan area on Sunday buried the remnants of 100 victims killed during the former Iraqi Baathist regime's Anfal campaign 39 years ago.

Families mourned their loved ones as coffins draped with the Kurdish flag carried their remains from Iraq’s southern desert, to Erbil and then to Barzan.

Iraqi and Kurdish officials attended the burial ceremony.

On July 31, 1983, an estimated 8,000 members of the Barzani tribe were rounded up, abducted from their homes in the Zagros mountains, and taken to the deserts of southern Iraq where they were killed on the orders of the Baath regime.

The remains of 696 victims of the Barzan genocide have been returned to their home in the Barzan area for burial so far, according to Rebwar Ramazan, head of Barzani martyrs and Anfal affairs.

“The remains of 7,304 Barzanis remain in Iraq’s desert,” he noted.

The Barzan atrocity was an act of collective punishment of the Barzanis, whose leaders were active in Kurdish revolts against the Iraqi regime. Men and boys were the primary targets, but women, children, and the elderly were all victims.