BAGHDAD: Iraq on Tuesday began exhuming the remains of dozens of victims, including children, likely killed during ex-dictator Saddam Hussein’s campaign against the country’s Kurds, a forensics official told AFP.
The mass grave was uncovered in Tal Al-Sheikhiya, about 300 kilometers (200 miles) south of Baghdad, said Zaid Al-Youssef, the head of Baghdad’s Medico-Legal Directorate which is tasked with identifying the remains.
“More than 70 bodies including women and children, ranging from newborns to 10 years old” have so far been exhumed, Youssef said.
Those remains were recovered from the surface layer of the site, he said, but “there could be a second deeper layer” with additional bodies.
“The evidence collected indicates they were summarily executed in 1988,” said Youssef, which coincides with Saddam’s brutal “Anfal” campaign against Iraq’s Kurds.
The operation took place between 1987 and 1988 and saw nearly 180,000 Kurds killed and more than 3,000 villages destroyed.
“The female victims were blindfolded and killed by gunshots to the head, but also have traces on various parts of their bodies of bullets that were fired randomly,” Youssef said.
The grave lies in the southern province of Mutahanna, also home to the notorious Nigrat Salman prison camp.
Many Kurds and political opponents of the previous regime were held there, and survivors shared tales of humiliation, rape and detention of minors as part of Saddam’s 2006 trial.
Iraq has been hit by wave after wave of conflict in recent decades, culminating in the fight against the Daesh group which ended in late 2017.
Those years of conflict left grave sites all across the country where the remains of thousands of victims from Iraq’s diverse ethnic and religious communities have been uncovered.
IS alone left behind an estimated 200 mass graves that could hold up to 12,000 bodies, the United Nations has said.
Authorities are testing remains from the most recent conflict as well as wars dating back three decades in an effort to identify the fates of missing Iraqis.
According to Iraqi authorities, Saddam’s regime forcefully disappeared more than one million people in the 1980s and 1990s, and many of their families are still trying to find out what happened to them.
Iraq exhumes bodies thought to be Kurds killed by Saddam
Iraq exhumes bodies thought to be Kurds killed by Saddam
- “More than 70 bodies including women and children, ranging from newborns to 10 years old” have so far been exhumed
- “The evidence collected indicates they were summarily executed in 1988,” said the head of Baghdad’s Medico-Legal Directorate
After Ocalan visit, Turkiye opposition MPs brief speaker, far-right leader
ISTANBUL: A delegation from Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish opposition DEM party met Thursday with the parliamentary speaker and far-right MHP leader amid tentative efforts to resume dialogue between Ankara and the banned PKK militant group. DEM’s three-person delegation met with Speaker Numan Kurtulmus and then with MHP leader Devlet Bahceli.
The aim was to brief them on a rare weekend meeting with Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party who is serving life without parole on Imrali prison island near Istanbul.
It was the Ocalan’s first political visit in almost a decade and follows an easing of tension between Ankara and the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil and is proscribed by Washington and Brussels as a terror group.
The visit took place two months after Bahceli extended a surprise olive branch to Ocalan, inviting him to parliament to disband the PKK and saying he should be given the “right to hope” in remarks understood to moot a possible early release.
Backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the tentative opening came a month before Syrian rebels began a lightning 12-day offensive that ousted Bashar Assad in a move which has forced Turkiye’s concerns about the Kurdish issue into the headlines.
During Saturday’s meeting with DEM lawmakers Sirri Sureyya Onder and Pervin Buldan, Ocalan said he had “the competence and determination to make a positive contribution to the new paradigm started by Mr.Bahceli and Mr.Erdogan.”
Onder and Buldan then “began a round of meetings with the parliamentary parties” and were joined on Thursday by Ahmet Turk, 82, a veteran Kurdish politician with a long history of involvement in efforts to resolve the Kurdish issue.
Iraq’s Sulaimaniyah city bans groups accused of PKK links
SULAIMANIYAH: Authorities in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah have banned four organizations accused of affiliation with the Turkish-blacklisted Kurdistan Workers Party, activists said Thursday, denouncing the move as “political.”
The four organizations include two feminist groups and a media production house, according to the METRO center for press freedoms which organized a news conference in Sulaimaniyah to criticize the decision.
PKK fighters have several positions in Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdistan region, which also hosts Turkish military bases used to strike Kurdish insurgents.
Ankara and Washington both deem the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkiye, a terrorist organization.
Authorities in Sulaimaniyah, the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s second city, have been accused of leniency toward PKK activities.
But the Iraqi federal authorities in Baghdad have recently sharpened their tone against the Turkish Kurdish insurgents.
Col. Salam Abdel Khaleq, the spokesman for the Kurdish Asayesh security forces in Sulaimaniyah, told AFP that the bans came “after a decision from the Iraqi judiciary and as a result of the expiration of the licenses” of these groups.
Israeli military says commandos raided missile plant in Syria in September
JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said on Thursday its special forces raided an underground missile production site in Syria in September that it said was primed to produce hundreds of precision missiles for use against Israel by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
The complex near Masyaf, in Hama province close to the Mediterranean coast, was “the flagship of Iranian manufacturing efforts in our region,” Israeli military spokesperson, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told a briefing with reporters.
“This facility was designed to manufacture hundreds of strategic missiles per year from start to finish, for Hezbollah to use in their aerial attacks on Israel,” he said.
He said the plant, dug into the side of a mountain, had been under observation by Israeli intelligence since construction work began in 2017 and was on the point of being able to manufacture precision-guided long-range missiles, some of them with a range of up to 300 km (190 miles).
“This ability was becoming active, so we’re talking about an immediate threat,” he said.
Details of the Sept. 8 raid have been reported in the Israeli media in recent days but Shoshani said this was the first confirmation by the military, which usually does not comment on special forces operations of this type.
At the time, Syrian state media said at least 16 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the west of the country.
Shoshani said the hours-long nighttime raid was “one of the more complex operations the IDF has done in recent years.” Accompanied by airstrikes, it involved dozens of aircraft and around 100 helicopter-borne troops, who located weapons and seized documents, he said.
“At the end of the raid, the troops dismantled the facility, including the machines and the manufacturing equipment themselves,” he said, adding that dismantling the plant was “key to ensure the safety of Israel.”
Israeli officials have accused the former Syrian government of President Bahar Assad of helping the Lebanese-based Hezbollah movement receive arms from Iran and say they are determined to stop the flow of weapons into Lebanon.
As Bashar Assad’s government crumbled toward the end of last year, Israel launched a series of strikes against Syrian military infrastructure and weapons manufacturing sites to ensure they did not fall into the hands of its enemies.
Israel says struck Hezbollah rocket launchers in south Lebanon
- Israeli military said Thursday’s strike targeted medium-range rocket launchers in the Nabatieh area
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah rocket launchers in south Lebanon on Thursday, despite a fragile ceasefire with the militant group.
The truce, which took effect on November 27, has been marked by mutual accusations of violations from both sides.
The Israeli military said Thursday’s strike targeted medium-range rocket launchers in the Nabatieh area.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported at least three Israeli strikes in the area.
“Prior to the strike a request was sent to the Lebanese armed forces to neutralize the launchers that posed a threat to Israeli civilians and... troops,” the military said in a statement.
“The launchers were struck only after the request was not addressed by the Lebanese armed forces.”
Under the terms of the ceasefire, the Lebanese army is to deploy alongside UN peacekeepers in the south as the Israeli army withdraws over a 60-day period.
Hezbollah is to withdraw its forces north of the Litani River — some 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border — and dismantle its military infrastructure in the south.
In late December, the UN peacekeeping force expressed concern at the “continuing” damage done by Israeli forces in south Lebanon.
On Thursday, the Israeli military insisted it was acting to remove any threat to Israel “in accordance with the ceasefire understandings.”
