Three new mass graves were discovered in Iraq containing...

Three new mass graves were discovered in Iraq containing the corpses of more than 3,000 Kurds, the Al-Sabah newspaper reported. It said two of the mass graves were discovered in Kirkuk Province about 300 km north of Baghdad, while the third was in the Samawa desert in south-western Iraq. The first grave contained the corpses of 170 to 200 Kurdish villagers "who were executed in 1987 and 1988 during a genocidal Baathist campaign against the Kurdish people," the newspaper said. The second grave was close to the highway linking the northern city Kirkuk to the western town Baiji, a stronghold of followers of Saddam. "This mass grave contained the corpses of more than 2,000 victims, including women and children, buried in their civilian clothes," Al-Sabah said. The third newly discovered grave was in the south-western desert about 300 km south of Baghdad, the newspaper said. It quoted an unnamed former driver of the Security Department who claimed to have witness a massacre there as saying, "In 1983, we transported more than 2,000 Kurds who were over 10 years of age, and including many women, from the Deshti Hareer area of Arbil (about 450 km north of Baghdad) to Samawa." Special forces of the Directorate General of Security surrounded the area one day ahead of our departure. They began loading people into buses with dark window glass meant to conceal what was happening inside these buses. In a military convoy, we arrived at the site (of the mass grave) after two days of driving," the driver said, adding that three captains of the Security Department were waiting for the victims to arrive. "Then the mass execution of all the 2,000 Kurds began. It took about an hour and a half. The victims, who were stuffed in nearby halls, were brought out in groups of 10. There were bulldozers at the site digging 10-meter long and 2.5-meter deep graves. When those executed reached 90, the victims were buried in one of the graves and then they moved on to another grave," the man said.