Iraqi authorities have begun excavating the site of a mass grave believed to contain thousands of victims of the Islamic State (IS) group near Mosul city, the project's director told AFP on Sunday.

The first phase, which was launched on August 10, includes surface-level excavation at the Khasfa site, director Ahmed al-Assadi said.

An AFP correspondent visiting the site in northern Iraq on Sunday said the team unearthed human skulls buried in the sand.

Khasfa is located near Mosul, where IS had established the capital of their self-declared "caliphate" before being defeated in Iraq in late 2017.

Assadi said that there were no precise figures for the numbers of victims buried there -- one of dozens of mass graves IS left behind in Iraq -- but a UN report from 2018 said Khasfa was likely

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