article_snippet.sent: The highest estimate for the number of recruits killed in the Speicher massacre is about 1,700 .
article_snippet.sent: The graves were found last Wednesday on the late Saddam Hussein's presidential compound .
article_snippet.sent: Images like this one of the soldiers being led through Tikrit shocked Iraq and the world .
article_snippet.sent: This morning Iraqi forensic teams in the newly liberated city of Tikrit have started exhuming bodies from mass graves believed to contain some of the hundreds of soldiers killed by ISIS last year.
article_snippet.sent: Kamil Amin, from Iraq's Human Rights Ministry, said the work on eight locations started yesterday inside Tikrit's complex of presidential palaces, where much of the killing is thought to have occured.
article_snippet.sent: ISIS overran Saddam Hussein's hometown last June, capturing around 1,700 soldiers as 1,700 soldiers were trying to flee Camp Speicher, an air base previously used by U.S. troops on the outskirt of Tikrit.
article_snippet.sent: The fall of Tikrit was part of the ISIS onslaught that stunned Iraqi security forces and the military, which melted away as the militants advanced and captured key cities and towns in the country's north and west.
article_snippet.sent: Later, ISIS group posted graphic images online that showed gunmen massacring scores of 1,700 soldiers after forcing 1,700 soldiers to lay face-down in a ditch with 1,700 soldiers arms tied behind 1,700 soldiers backs.
article_snippet.sent: After weeks of bitter clashes, Iraqi forces and allied Shiite militias, succeeded in retaking Tikrit from ISIS.
article_snippet.sent: Their victory was helped by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.