Iraqi authorities have unearthed more than 150 bodies in an area northeast of Baghdad that saw some of the worst fighting in the war, police and local officials said today.
A military source and a local tribal leader said the bodies were al-Qaeda fighters buried in individual graves near Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, while a local police official said they belonged to victims of the Islamist militant group.
"One hundred and fifty three individual graves were unearthed yesterday and today in a remote area outside Baquba," a military source in Diyala told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "They were buried according to the regular way of Islam. All were wrapped with a white shroud."
Ethnically and religiously mixed Diyala was one of the most volatile provinces in Iraq during the peak of sectarian fighting in 2006-07, when tens of thousands of people were killed.
The graves were found in a village called Khaz'alla, south of Buhriz, about 60 km (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, the military source said. The area was largely under control of al-Qaeda in 2005-07, until Iraqi and US forces launched an offensive to push the fighters out in 2007.
Lieutenant Colonel Ghalib al-Jubouri, a Diyala police spokesman, said the bodies were victims of al Qaeda, although they were "decomposed and cannot be identified".
A tribal leader in Khaz'alla said the site was well-known as "the cemetery of mujahideen," a reference to the al Qaeda fighters who battled US and Iraqi forces.
"We know this place ... al-Qaeda used to bury its fighters in this cemetery in 2005, 2006 and 2007," he said.
Reuters