Friday, April 06, 2007
Government buries thousands in mass graves in Karbala
Security
(Azzaman) - The government is burying en mass hundreds of bodies of victims of violence which have been lying in Baghdad morgue for several months. Government sources, refusing to be named for fear or retribution said, said at least 2,252 bodies have been buried in the Shiite holy city of Karbala. But the government itself is making no secret of the burials. A government-related website said on Wednesday that 93 more bodies were buried in Karbala.
It said they were all numbered and pictured before burial. It said the 93 bodies could not be identified and have been lying in the morgue for a long period. No one has come forward to claim them, it said. The dead were victims of current sectarian strife in the country. It is not clear why so many bodies had remained in the morgue for so long period without anyone asking for them.
During interviews, residents of some of Baghdad’s most violent neighborhoods said many relatives of the victims were killed at the morgue as they were trying to retrieve the bodies. In other instances the victims had either all members of their families killed or forced to flee their areas. Claiming a body from a morgue in Iraq is a dangerous endeavor and occasionally families have to pay militias huge sums of money to help them retrieve the dead bodies of beloved ones.
It said they were all numbered and pictured before burial. It said the 93 bodies could not be identified and have been lying in the morgue for a long period. No one has come forward to claim them, it said. The dead were victims of current sectarian strife in the country. It is not clear why so many bodies had remained in the morgue for so long period without anyone asking for them.
During interviews, residents of some of Baghdad’s most violent neighborhoods said many relatives of the victims were killed at the morgue as they were trying to retrieve the bodies. In other instances the victims had either all members of their families killed or forced to flee their areas. Claiming a body from a morgue in Iraq is a dangerous endeavor and occasionally families have to pay militias huge sums of money to help them retrieve the dead bodies of beloved ones.
Labels: Baghdad morgues, bodies, government, Karbala
