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Iraqis Find 8 Mass Graves Containing 1,000 Bodies, Kurds Say
Eight mass graves containing about 1,000 bodies were discovered in northern Iraq, President Jalal Talabani's political party said.
The graves were found yesterday in the villages of al-Asri and Tubazawa, west of Kirkuk, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said on its Arabic-language Web site today. Two of the sites contained at total of at least 800 bodies, the party said.
Most of the dead were Kurds, while others were Christians who lived in the two majority-Kurdish villages, the PUK said. No further details were immediately available.
Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein initiated a wave of violence from 1987 to 1988, called the Anfal campaign, to punish the Kurdish minority for siding with Iran in the Iran-Iraq war.
Hussein is facing charges of genocide for that three-phase military campaign, which left as many as 180,000 people dead, and is already on trial for the 1982 massacre of 148 Shiite Muslims from the village of Dujail.
An estimated 500,000 people were killed by the regime in the northern Sulaimaniya, Arbil, and Duhok provinces, which have been under Kurdish control since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, according to Iraq's Human Rights Ministry.
There are at least 290 mass graves across Iraq and about 50 percent of Iraq's population is missing at least one family member, the ministry has said.
Bloomberg ~ Caroline Alexander ** Iraqis Find 8 Mass Graves Containing 1,000 Bodies, Kurds Say
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