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ALI AKBAR DAREINI
ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 17, 2003

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Mass graves include Kuwaiti prisoners

KARBALA, Iraq—Volunteers with shovels excavated a mass grave in the Shiite holy city of Karbala yesterday, calling the bodies evidence of crimes committed by Saddam Hussein.

The remains of 45 bodies were pulled from the ground in about three hours at the site, located near the holy shrine of Hussein, the grandson of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad.

Women slapped themselves in the face in grief and men beat their chests to pay tribute to their slain countrymen.

"The blood of innocent people won't go away. Criminals should stand trial," some of the 1,000 people gathered at the site chanted. "Death to the Baath party members.''

Local residents in Karbala's Mokhayem district said they suspect as many as 5,000 sets of remains are buried in the area, though they offered no immediate proof.

The mass grave is the fourth uncovered in Iraq this week.

"This is a material evidence of crimes committed by the tyrant Saddam," said resident Bassem al-Tamimi.

The Shiites, who make up 60 per cent of Iraq's population, were persecuted and oppressed under Saddam's Sunni Muslim-dominated regime.

Many also hold deep anger against the United States, a country they believe abandoned them in 1991 after encouraging them to mount an armed revolt against Saddam after the Persian Gulf War.

Thousands of Shiites were slain by Saddam's forces after that rebellion.

The mass grave is the latest to surface as Iraqis, freed from Saddam's rule, begin to take stock of their missing and dead.

On Thursday, volunteers said after 10 days of digging that about 3,100 sets of remains of people killed after the 1991 Shiite revolt had been found at Mahaweel, 100 kilometres south of Baghdad. Iraqis said some apparently had been buried alive at the site, the largest mass grave found since U.S. forces overthrew Saddam's Baath party government last month.

Also this week, Iraqis pulled bodies from a newly discovered mass grave near the southern city of Basra.

That site in southern Iraq was believed to contain remains of about 150 Shiite Muslims who were killed by Saddam's regime after another rebellion in 1999.

Meanwhile, Iraq's pro-American opposition group said yesterday it had found a mass grave with the remains of at least 40 Kuwaiti prisoners of war and believed up to 600 bodies were buried there.

The Iraqi National Congress (INC) said tests had confirmed that the bodies discovered in al-Habbaniyah near Baghdad were those of at least some of the 600 Kuwaitis listed as missing after Iraq's 1990 invasion of its neighbour.

"The Iraqi National Congress believes it has located the mass grave of 600 Kuwaiti prisoners of war," the statement said.

"A group from the INC went this morning to examine the site and found 40 bodies and many more remain (to be) unearthed."

Several mass graves have been discovered across Iraq after U.S-led forces toppled president Saddam Hussein last month.

U.S. defence officials said last week that Kuwaiti and U.S. experts were investigating whether a mass grave found at another site contained the remains of the missing Kuwaitis.

Saddam's government argued that all Kuwaiti prisoners had been released, but held talks with officials from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in Amman, Jordan, before the recent war to discuss the fate of the missing.

Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait in August, 1990. A U.S.-led coalition drove Iraqi forces out in the 1991 Gulf War.

With files from Reuters