Iraq exhumes remains of 15 bodies from mass grave

NAJAF: Iraqi authorities have exhumed the remains of 15 people from a mass grave believed to hold dozens more likely killed under Saddam Hussein, an official said on Saturday.

The mass grave was first discovered in April near the southern city of Najaf, during work to build a residential compound.

“There could be 100 victims in this grave. It is an estimation, the number could be higher due to the large size of the area,” said Abdul Ilah Al Naeli, who heads a government foundation tasked with finding mass graves and identifying the remains.

Calling the burial “the scene of the crime,” Naeli said the mass grave dates back to the “1991 popular uprising.” A correspondent saw skulls and other human remains near the construction site where cement buildings have been erected.

Iraq pays tribute to the missing on May 16, which is known in the war-wracked country as the National Day of Mass Graves.

The oil-rich country has been hit by waves of conflict in subsequent decades, culminating in the fight against the Daesh militant group, which ended in 2017.

Daesh alone let behind an estimated 200 mass graves that could hold up to 12,000 bodies, the United Nations has said.

Authorities in Iraq are frequently announcing the discovery of mass graves, the latest in March when the remains of 85 Daesh militants and their relatives were exhumed in the northern city of Mosul.

Recently, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards artillery fire hit an area north of the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Arbil, targeting what Iranian state television described as terrorist bases.

Iraqi Kurdish media reported that a shell had landed in a village in the Sidekan area near the Iranian border, around 100km northeast of Arbil.

Iraq’s foreign ministry condemned the Iranian shelling, which it said targeted some locations in the Sidekan area.

The Iranian state TV said no casualties had been reported. Iran’s Tasnim news agency said the Guards have previously targeted Iranian

Kurdish militants based in northern Iraq.

A local official, quoted by the Arbil-based Rudaw news website, said shells have occasionally hit the area in the past.

In March, the Guards carried out an atack against what Iranian state media described as “Israeli strategic centres” in Arbil, suggesting it was revenge for Israeli air strikes that killed Iranian military personnel in Syria.

The Iraqi Kurdish regional government said the atack in March only targeted civilian residential areas, not sites belonging to foreign countries, and called on the international community to carry out an investigation.