News - Middle East: Another indigenous community in Canada has found evidence of more unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school, amid a growing tally of such horrific discoveries that first shocked the nation last year.

The Kapawe'no First Nation in northern Alberta Province said on Tuesday it identified 169 "potential" unmarked graves at site of the school, known as the Grouard Mission, about 370 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

The school had been opened by the Catholic Church in 1894 and ran until 1961.

The findings came as a result of a six-day survey, conducted using ground-penetrating radar and drones, it said.
In a report posted on its website, the community said its findings are "the beginning of a long journey to find answers to what happened to the children who never came home from the residential school at St. Bernard's Mission."

"There remains a lack of justice and accountability for what happened," it said. "There is more work to be done to find those answers."

The latest discovery brings the total number of unmarked graves found so far to more than 1,500.

More investigations are also underway across the country into former residential schools, with more than 4,000 children believed to be missing.

The first such discovery occurred in May 2021 after an indigenous community unmarked a mass grave containing the remains of 215 children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.