Thousands of Iraqis buried unidentified: ICRC

Geneva, Aug 30: Thousands of Iraqis killed since 2003 were buried without being identified by their families, the International Committee of the Red Cross said today.

Citing Iraqi public sources, the Geneva-based humanitarian organisation estimated 375,000 to 1 million Iraqis remained unaccounted for from a series of conflicts that started with the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

''Missing persons might have been captured, abducted, perhaps killed and buried in unmarked graves, or they may lay in a hospital in critical conditions or linger in a hidden place of detention,'' the ICRC said in a report issued ahead of the International Day of the Disappeared on August 30.

ICRC director of operations Pierre Kraehenbuehl said there were no figures on disappearances since the US.-led invasion four years ago although people went missing daily and morgues were struggling to cope with scores of unclaimed corpses.

Some 10,000 bodies brought to Baghdad's Medical-Legal Institute over the past year have never been identified and 4,000 unknown victims have been buried in special cemeteries in Najaf and Kerbala since 2003, he told a news conference.

One of the big challenges is to ensure officials maintain clear burial sites for such human remains to allow the dead to be more easily identified in the future, Kraehenbuehl said.

The ICRC stressed the need for a central source of information about missing persons and unclaimed bodies in light of the problems involved in searching for loved ones in Iraq.

''For an Iraqi family, the process of looking for a missing person may prove to be extremely complicated or even very dangerous, and sometimes impossible,'' its report said.

Even when bodies are found, the ICRC said, trips to recover them can be high-risk.

Iraqi families are forced to ''mostly work by speculation'' to find their missing. Many distraught people have paid hundreds of dollars to people falsely claiming to know the whereabouts of their loved ones.

Iraq has a population of more than 27 million.

Kraehenbuehl said it was critical that authorities worldwide helped the families of missing persons find out what happened to the disappeared, as a matter of humanitarian principle.

''Not knowing whether a loved one is dead or alive causes anxiety, anger and a deep sense of injustice, and makes it impossible for relatives to mourn and ultimately reach a sense of closure,'' he said.

Reuters>