The enemy patrols noticed the presence of the people of Hoveyzeh and realized that the villagers of the surrounding areas were their main adversaries, providing intelligence cooperation to the IRGC forces. Consequently, to seek revenge against the local Arab population, they raided their villages, opened fire on the residents, destroyed their homes with tanks, and set them ablaze. In this brutal assault, many were martyred and wounded, and the enemy identified and captured about 28 Arabs from the surrounding villages. Among the Arab captives were individuals ranging from a 13-year-old teenager to an 80-year-old elderly man. From one village with fourteen households, the enemy took twelve people captive and took them to their headquarters. They placed the captives on tanks and took them to an unknown location.
In 1985, while the Hoveyzeh Construction Jihad was working in one of the surrounding villages, they came across a suspicious mound of earth surrounded by a large number of empty bullet casings. Upon excavating the soil, the skeletal remains of 28 individuals were discovered; their hands had been bound behind their backs with ropes, and they had been executed by firing squad. These remains belonged to the very 28 people whom the Iraqi forces had abducted from their villages in late October 1980. The local people took the bodies and buried them in the Hoveyzeh Martyrs' Cemetery. Later, an Iraqi soldier recounted to a Hoveyzeh villager that among these 28 was an 80-year-old man whom they repeatedly ordered to insult Khomeini, but he refused, saying: 'I will not insult my Marja (religious authority).' Consequently, the enraged Iraqi soldiers executed all 28 individuals with gunfire and covered their bodies using a bulldozer...
Source: The book 'Report to the Soil of Hoveyzeh'; memoirs of General Younes Sharifi; Soore Mehr Publications