BAGHDAD, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi on Saturday confirmed the importance of documenting crimes committed by the extremist Islamic State (IS) militants against Iraqis and holding the perpetrators accountable.

A statement by his office said al-Halbousi met with Karim Khan, head of the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh (UNITAD), and the two discussed efforts to disclose and deal with the genocides committed by IS in Iraq.

"Halbousi stressed the importance of documenting IS crimes, holding the perpetrators and those behind them accountable," adding that the threat of terrorism is growing, the statement said.

For his part, Khan expressed his team's keenness to work in coordination with the Iraqi authorities to uncover the genocides and massacres committed by IS against the people of Iraq.

Earlier in the month, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) said in a statement that UNITAD will assist the Iraqi authorities in exhuming mass graves in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh.

On March 21, the UN team announced their first exhumation of a Yazidi mass grave in the village of Kojo, south of the town of Sinjar, some 100 km west of Nineveh's provincial capital Mosul, where the IS group killed hundreds of people in 2014.

The team exhumed remains of 30 bodies and their associated evidences and transported them to the medical legal directorate in Baghdad for investigation, it said.

UNITAD was established to support local efforts in holding IS militants accountable for the crimes and genocides committed against humanity through collecting, preserving and storing evidence according to international standards.