900 bodies found in mass grave in Iraq

The Iraqi authorities dug up a mass grave with some 900 bodies near Iraq's southern central city of Diwaniyah, believed to be Kurds killed during Saddam Hussein's rule in 1980s, Iraqi official newspaper reported on Thursday. The corpses were found in al-Shanafiyah area, some 50 km southwest of Diwaniyah, the capital city of al-Qadsiyah province, the state-owned al-Sabah newspaper quoted a provincial council member as saying. "Judicial teams from the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry arrived at the site where the bodies buried in trenches at the local cemetery of al-Amharri in al-Shanafiyah," Dakhil Saihoud, a member of the provincial council and head of the council's justice and accountability commission told the newspaper. "Preliminary investigations indicate that the remains are those of Kurds who have been killed during Saddam regime in 1980s," Saihoud said. He said that the judicial teams have transferred some of the bodies to forensic laboratories in the city of Najaf to help in identification. Mass graves in Iraq become well known since the U.S.-led invasion of the country, as dozens of mass graves were discovered made during Saddam Hussein's rule, but dozens others were discovered later were made by the chaos and the bloodshed that followed the 2003 war of Iraq.