Iraq Says New Saddam Hussein-Era Mass Grave Found

BAGHDAD — A mass grave discovered in northeast Iraq contains dozens of bodies, mostly of women and children believed killed during a crackdown against Kurds by former dictator Saddam Hussein, an Iraqi official said Saturday.

The grave was originally found nearly two years ago west of Kirkuk, though its discovery was only made public this week after forensic pathologists began examining it, said Majid Abdullah Karim, an official with the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights.

Investigators initially put the number of bodies found at 185, though Karim said the number could be "significantly less" based on the number of bones and skulls recovered Friday by pathologists. Karim did not give an exact number, estimating only "dozens."

Mass graves across Iraq have been turning up with some frequency since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam's regime.

The latest discovery was made at a former military detention camp used by Saddam's forces in Tubzama, just west of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, said Karim. The grave was discovered after people reported seeing bones and bits of clothing at the camp, he added.

The remains were believed to be those of Kurds killed between 1988 and 1991, Karim said. Many Kurds were taken to the detention camp by Saddam's forces, he added.

The bodies were determined to be mostly women and children, based on the clothing and personal items excavated at the site, Karim said.

The remains will be tested for DNA, and then likely will be returned to the semiautonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq for full identification.

Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were killed or expelled from Iraq in the late 1980s and then again during the Kurdish uprising following the first Gulf War in 1991.

Baghdad's attacks — including the use of poison gas in the Kurdish town of Halabja — came to symbolize the cruelty of Saddam's grip on power and brought the nickname "Chemical Ali" to one of the masterminds, Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid.

A number of regime officials, including al-Majid, have been sentenced to death. The sentence to date has not been carried out.

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Iraq truck bomb kills 64

By Marwan Ibrahim in Kirkuk, Iraq | June 21

A TRUCK bomb has killed 64 people near the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk, the country's bloodiest attack in 15 months just 10 days before US troops are due to quit urban areas.

The attack, which also wounded 202 people, struck near a mosque in Taza Kharmatu, a predominantly Turkmen Shi'ite town south of Kirkuk, at around 1pm (local time on Saturday, with women and children among the victims, officials said.

"This ugly crime is an attempt to harm security and stability and spread mistrust of the Iraqi forces," Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said.

"Our forces ... will arrest those who committed the crime in Taza Kharmatu and bring them to justice."

Sabah al-Daoudi, the Iraqi health ministry's representative in Kirkuk, said 64 people had died and 202 were injured in what he described as a "suicide explosion". Shukur Abdullah, the head of Kirkuk hospital's mortuary, confirmed the death toll.

Mr Daoudi said around 30 of the wounded were being kept in hospital for treatment.

A senior police official, who did not want to be identified, said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, and appeared to have been an al-Qaeda bombing.

More than one tonne of explosives was used in the bombing, the official said.

"I saw a truck passing through a very narrow road and, a few minutes later, I heard a huge explosion and the ceiling of my shop collapsed on my head," said Akbar Zain al-Abdin, 40, whose fertiliser and farm products store was almost completely destroyed.

"I didn't see a fire, but I saw a huge cloud of sand in the sky," he said.

"The victims were our relatives and our friends, their houses collapsed on them."

The Turkmen Front, Iraq's main Turkmen political party, announced three days of mourning and called for an "immediate investigation... and for the criminals to be brought to justice."

The attack, which took place around 400 metres from the Shiite Al-Rasul mosque, also seriously damaged dozens of houses, with police saying that many victims could still be under the rubble.

An AFP reporter at the scene said the bomb left a deep crater in the ground.

In the aftermath of the attack, police urged local residents to donate blood.

The bombing was the bloodiest single attack in Iraq since March 6, 2008, when a roadside bomb was followed by a suicide attack in central Baghdad's Karrada neighbourhood, killing 68 people.

More recently, a car bomb on June 10 in a market in Batha, in the largely peaceful southern province of Dhi Qar, killed 19 people and wounded 56. The attack was blamed on al-Qaeda.

Also on Saturday, a car bomb in the former insurgent bastion of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, killed three police and wounded seven others.

The Taza bombing comes barely a week ahead of a deadline for US troops to pull back from Iraq's built-up areas as part of a landmark security accord signed between Washington and Baghdad in November.

The agreement calls on US forces to leave Iraq altogether by the end of 2011.

On Saturday, the US army handed over to Iraqi control a base in Baghdad's sprawling Shi'ite neighbourhood of Sadr City, once a bastion for anti-US radicals.

The Iraqi premier warned earlier this month that insurgent groups and militia would likely step up their attacks in the coming weeks in a bid to undermine confidence in Iraq's own security forces.

Violence has dropped markedly in Iraq in recent months, with May seeing the lowest Iraqi death toll since the 2003 invasion. But attacks remain common, particularly in Baghdad and the main northern city of Mosul.

Kirkuk, north of Baghdad, is plagued with intercommunal tensions among its Kurdish, Turkmen and Arab communities.

Those tensions prevented the holding of provincial elections on January 31, when all but three autonomous Kurdish provinces voted for new councils.

Source: The Australian

Iraqi forces arrest four teenagers training to be suicide bombers

James Hider | April 21

IRAQI security forces have arrested four children who were allegedly part of a group of youngsters being groomed by al-Qai'da to become suicide bombers, an Iraqi army general said.

The children, who were detained in a village near the northern city of Kirkuk, were part of a cell known as the "Birds of Paradise" and were being specially trained to avoid detection as they carried out attacks, security officials said.

"Special forces units have arrested an organisation of children consisting of four individuals under the age of 14 who call themselves the 'Birds of Paradise'," said General Abdelamir al-Zaidi, the commander of the Iraqi army division in Kirkuk.

"The group relies on children and is connected to al-Qa'ida. It works to recruit children and young people to carry out suicide attacks and to aid the terrorist groups in detonating roadside bombs."

Al-Qa'ida groups have previously used Iraqi children to carry out attacks on US and Iraqi security forces, even using them in one instance as a cover to sneak a car bomb past a Baghdad checkpoint before detonating the device with the youngsters still inside. Militants have also been accused of using mentally disabled women as suicide bombers.

Other insurgent groups have used children to fire rocket-propelled grenades and set roadside bombs, knowing that they were less likely to be shot at by soldiers.

The newly discovered children's cell appeared to derive its name from the Islamic belief that when children die they become birds of paradise.

Kirkuk, an oil-rich city claimed by the Kurds as part of their semi-autonomous homeland to the north, lies between the two remaining areas where al-Qa'ida is still a prominent force - Baqouba to the south and Mosul to the northwest. Tensions between rival Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen are high in the city, and there are fears that the ethnic fault line could split into a new conflict.

Iraqi security forces arrested several other people in the sweep, the general said. Another officer said that the use of children showed that al-Qa'ida was becoming more desperate as the security forces grew in strength and ability.

"This is a new method and it is the method of someone who is losing the war," he said.

"Their infrastructure is being destroyed and their leaders are being arrested and killed. They are sending a message that, `we are still here, but we have to rely on every method to carry out our terrorist operations'."

Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, has warned repeatedly in recent weeks of the danger of renewed violence.

"Today we face a new war of subversion, sedition and suspicion," he told a gathering of police officers at the Ministry of Interior this weekend, warning that factions within Iraq were still trying to undermine the fragile status quo after years of bloodshed.

The country has experienced a sudden resurgence in attacks recently, mainly targeting police and army units, and irregular militias working alongside the security forces.

In Fallujah on Monday the young daughter and niece of a police officer were killed by a bomb left outside the family house. A suicide bomber wearing an Iraqi army uniform blew himself up near a contingent of United States troops visiting the mayor of Baqouba, wounding eight Americans and killing three Iraqis.

Source: TheAustralian