On a cold December day in 2015, "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL) gunmen executed seven young men in a village schoolyard in the Ninawa province district of al-Qayyarah, south of Mosul.

Villagers told Diyaruna they will never forget that date, December 28th, when they were summoned at gunpoint to al-Hod Primary School.

As the villagers -- including the families and relatives of the seven youth -- looked on, an ISIL gunman read out a death sentence against them, accusing them of "leaving the land of the caliphate".

Then a hail of bullets struck the heads of the victims from behind, said al-Qayyarah district director and al-Hod resident Saleh al-Jubury.

ISIL fighters had apprehended the youth just one day earlier, as they tried to escape from the village across the Tigris River, he told Diyaruna.

"This crime sparked a major outcry from residents against ISIL," he said. "It was the first spark of a popular struggle against the terrorists that lasted nearly a year, until the village was liberated."

Iraqi forces, supported by the local population, recaptured al-Hod at the beginning of the campaign to liberate Ninawa, which kicked off on October 17th.

Remembering young lives

The schoolyard has now been transformed into a memorial to the tragedy.

The young men of the village took it upon themselves to paint the story of the group's brutality on panels on the school wall, al-Jubury said.

"Some of the paintings showed ISIL elements with human bodies and the heads of black wolves pointing their weapons from behind at the young men, who were bound and struck down on the ground wearing orange clothes," he said.

The name and age of each victim is displayed on the painting.

"Residents also cleaned up the school yard, planted it with flowers and trees, and raised the Iraqi flag in the middle of the square," al-Jubury said.

Through this voluntary initiative, al-Hod residents sought to inform the world about one of ISIL's massacres against unarmed civilians, al-Qayyarah district council chairman Mahmoud Abdul-Rahman Tabour told Diyaruna.

"They wanted to show a fraction of the brutality of that group," he said, adding that it is "stripped of humanity and does not know mercy".

"The schoolyard is now known as al-Hod Martyrs Square," he said. "This place will, from now on, witness a memorial service for the souls of the victims every year on the day they were executed to recall that crime and all the crimes of the terrorists."

Al-Qayyarah district council will transform the public park at the district entrance into a popular meeting place which will include artwork, plaques and photographs commemorating district residents killed by ISIL, he said.

Brutal until the end

The group continued to commit crimes until its last day in the district, Tabour said, when it killed nine former Iraqi security personnel, including a high-ranking disabled officer, accusing them of collaborating with the liberating forces.

The villagers of al-Hod were treated very harshly during ISIL's occupation because they rejected the group and resisted its control, Ninawa provincial council member Abdul Rahman al-Wakka told Diyaruna.

"In addition to the crime of executing the [seven] youngsters, the group killed village residents and displaced others who were forced to live in the wild without the minimum necessities of life," he said.

"More than 170 residents of al-Hod village died, and about 2,500 families were displaced from their homes by force," al-Wakka said.

The execution of the seven youth is symbolic of the suffering the villagers endured at the hands of ISIL, he said, and the "sacrifices they have made for salvation from their injustice".

"The day in December will never be erased from the memory of the people, as it is the day for all the martyrs of the village and a symbol of its people's resistance against ISIL," al-Wakka said.