US claims 400 bodies found in mass grave

US soldiers claim they have found another mass grave, this time thought to contain the bodies of 400 Kurdish women and children…

US soldiers claim they have found another mass grave, this time thought to contain the bodies of 400 Kurdish women and children allegedly executed by Saddam Hussein.

Members of the 101st Airborne Division made the discovery in Hatra, 200 miles north of Baghdad. An assessment team was sent to the site.

Some 25 sets of remains - all women and children - have been pulled from the grave, each with a bullet hole in the skull. The military said the size of the area led them to believe it contained between 200 and 400 bodies.

Since the end of the war, at least 60 mass graves - some with hundreds of corpses - have been uncovered.

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The United Nations is investigating the killing or disappearance of at least 300,000 Iraqis believed to have been murdered by Saddam's regime.

The United States has deployed a British humanitarian group called Inforce, which specialises in collecting war crimes evidence from massacre sites, to look at about 15 of the graves. If Iraqis request it, they are allowed to sift through the dirt, looking for relatives.

PA