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BAGHDAD, Iraq - Investigators have discovered
several mass graves in southern Iraq that are
believed to contain the bodies of people killed by
Saddam Hussein's government, including one estimated
to hold 5,000 bodies, Iraqi officials say.
The graves, discovered over the past three months,
have not yet been dug up because of the risks posed
by the continuing insurgency and the lack of
qualified forensic workers, said Bakhtiar Amin,
Iraq's interim human rights minister. But initial
excavations have substantiated the accounts of
witnesses to a number of massacres. If the estimated
body counts prove correct, the new graves would be
among the largest in the grim tally of mass killings
that have gradually come to light since the fall of
Mr. Hussein's government two years ago. At least 290
grave sites containing the remains of some 300,000
people have been found since the American invasion
two years ago, Iraqi officials say.
Forensic evidence from some graves will feature
prominently in the trials of Mr. Hussein and the
leaders of his government. The trials are to start
this spring.
One of the graves, near Basra, in the south, appears
to contain about 5,000 bodies of Iraqi soldiers who
joined a failed uprising against Mr. Hussein's
government after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
Another, near Samawa, is believed to contain the
bodies of 2,000 members of the Kurdish clad led by
Massoud Barzani.
As many as 8,000 men and boys from the clan
disappeared in 1983 after being rounded up in
northern Iraq by security forces at the command of
Ali Hassan al-Majid, widely known as Chemical Ali.
It remains unclear, however, how the victims ended
up in the south.
Investigators have also discovered the remains of 58
Kuwaitis spread across several sites, including what
appears to be a family of two adults and five
children who were crushed by a tank, Mr. Amin said.
At least 605 Kuwaitis disappeared at the time of the
first gulf war, and before the latest graves were
discovered, fewer than 200 had been accounted for,
he added.
A smaller site was discovered near Nasiriya earlier
this week. Arabic satellite television showed images
of residents digging up remains there.
Mr. Amin declined to give the exact locations of the
graves, saying it could endanger witnesses to the
massacres and anyone working at the sites.
One obstacle to exhuming bodies has been an absence
of DNA labs and forensic anthropologists in Iraq,
Mr. Amin said.
In the aftermath of Mr. Hussein's fall, thousands of
Iraqis overran mass grave sites, digging for their
relatives' remains with backhoes, shovels, even
their bare hands. A number of sites were looted,
making identification of victims difficult, said
Hanny Megally, Middle East director for the
International Center for Transitional Justice.
The American occupation authority, after some
initial hesitation, began classifying grave sites,
and international teams began traveling to the sites
in 2003 to conduct assessments or exhumations. But
toward the end of 2004, rising violence led nearly
all the teams to abandon their work.
Only one site has been fully examined, a grave of
Kurdish victims in northern Iraq, Mr. Megally said.
That work was overseen by the Regime Crimes Liaison
Office, which is gathering evidence for the trials
of Mr. Hussein and his deputies.
The interim Iraqi government, working with the
United Nations, has drawn up plans for a National
Center for Missing and Disappeared Persons that
would have authority over all aspects of the
process, from exhumations to providing assistance to
victims' families.
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