"Relics of 20 women were found inside a mass grave while removing debris in western Mosul," according to police official Omar al-Hajjar, Iraqi News reported.
"[The women] were executed by the so-called Islamic State as they were trying to escape toward the eastern side of the city during the liberation offensives last year," Hajjar added.
"Security troops recovered all the bodies along with their identity cards. They were transferred to forensic medicine department in Mosul to extradite them to their relatives," he said.
Last week, Farah al-Siraj, a member of Iraq's Parliament, claimed that 4,000 bodies are covered by debris in Mosul.
Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, was completely liberated from Daesh terrorists in July. Iraqi and US-led coalition forces launched an initiative to free the western part of the city in January after first recapturing its eastern portion. The terrorist group took over Mosul in June 2014 and the city became one of Daesh's major strongholds.
In October, the US-led coalition announced that Daesh's self-declared capital of Raqqa had been liberated. Soon after, a spokesperson for Operation Inherent Resolve, the US military's operational name for the intervention against Daesh, confirmed that hundreds of suspected Daesh members and their families were allowed to flee Raqqa in convoys arranged by US-backed forces. According to Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter Daesh Brett McGurk, the terrorists placed explosive devices in almost every single building the city's downtown.