Mass grave discovered in Iraq

The site in Diyala province contains the remains of maybe 100 people, officials say.
By Alexandra Zavis
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

5:43 AM PST, March 8, 2008

BAGHDAD — Iraqi security forces discovered a grave containing the badly decomposed remains of as many as 100 people in Diyala province, U.S. and Iraqi officials said today.

Police said the Iraqi forces were conducting a routine raid Friday when they found the grave concealed in an orchard near the town of Khalis, about 50 miles northeast of Baghdad.

"The skeletal remains appear to have been in the grave for a long time, and we have not yet determined who might be responsible for their death and burial," Maj. Winfield Danielson, a U.S. military spokesman, said by e-mail.

U.S. and Iraqi investigators believe hundreds of thousands of people were killed and buried in similar graves under Saddam Hussein. But police said today they suspect this grave was more recent.

Diyala has been plagued by sectarian fighting since Hussein's overthrow in 2003, and numerous communal graves have been discovered on the outskirts of its cities and villages.

Sunni militants loyal to Al Qaeda in Iraq and its affiliates in 2006 declared the province the center of their self-styled caliphate, where they imposed their brutal version of Islam. Hundreds of people were reported kidnapped and killed for working with the U.S. and Iraqi authorities, or for other perceived infractions.

A series of U.S.-led offensives has driven the insurgents from many of their Diyala sanctuaries in the last year, but attacks persist.

Police said five people were killed when two roadside bombs exploded minutes apart this morning along a well-traveled route through Wajihiyah, about 15 miles east of Baqubah, the Diyala provincial capital.

The first blast hit a civilian car, killing a woman and her two children, and injuring her husband and another relative, police said. The second bomb exploded near a passing minibus, killing two people and injuring eight others, they said.

On Friday, a U.S. soldier was killed and another injured in an explosion while conducting operations in Diyala, the military said in a statement. At least 3,975 U.S. personnel have been killed since the start of the Iraq war in 2003, according to the independent website icasualties.org.

The number of attacks has dropped more than 60 percent nationwide since the summer, when the U.S. military completed the buildup of 28,500 additional troops in Baghdad and surrounding regions. But U.S. officers believe many insurgents have relocated to northern Iraq, where much of the current violence is taking place.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

A Times special correspondent in Baghdad contributed to this report.