New Iraq Mass Grave May Contain 500 Bodies - PM

Date: 14 December 2004 

Source: REUTERS

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SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - Labourers digging on a construction site in northern Iraq uncovered human skulls and bones on Tuesday, which interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said were part of a mass grave believed to contain some 500 bodies.

Allawi told Iraq's National Council in Baghdad that the grave was found near the city of Sulaimaniya in the autonomous Kurdish region in the northeast of the country, where Saddam Hussein's forces carried out atrocities in the late 1980s.

``Today a mass grave was discovered in the city of Sulaimaniya, with the initial number of 500 martyrs,'' he said.

Allawi gave no further details but residents living nearby said workers found the remains while preparing the ground for a new hospital near a highway in Debashan, north of Sulaimaniya.

Iraq's Ministry of Human Rights has sealed off the site, where its staff are working. The driver of a mechanical digger told Kurdish television about 900 bodies might be in the grave but it was too early to know how many were buried there.

Evidence gathered from mass graves is expected to form a central part of the trials of the former president and his top deputies, accused of war crimes and other crimes against humanity during their decades in power.

Allawi said some lieutenants would go on trial next week.

Saddam launched military offensives against the Kurds in the late 1980s and his forces used poison gas against the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988.

Among those facing trial is Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as ``Chemical Ali'' for his alleged role in the gas attacks.

Allawi said that another Saddam cousin and former aide, Izzedine al-Majid, had been captured last week and would also face trial.

No date has been set for any process against Saddam himself, who briefly appeared in court in July this year, along with 11 of his senior deputies, to be informed of the general charges against him. Saddam was captured by U.S. troops a year ago after eight months on the run.

The work of excavating those mass graves already discovered around Iraq has been greatly complicated by an insurgency among Saddam's Sunni Arab minority. Investigators have been unable to visit many sites because of fighting.

(Additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim and Lin Noueihed in Baghdad)

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