First gruesome discovery

[Undertoad]

http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/...l&siteid=50002

But it was the catalogues of photographs which visibly shocked the soldiers who had made the grim discovery.

"Bloody hell," one whispered, "These are all executions.

"You can see the bullets, shots to the head."

It was a moment which confirmed that this warehouse, in an abandoned Iraqi military base on the outskirts of Az Zubayr, southern Iraq, was almost certainly the site of a mass atrocity.

And worse was to follow - in the neighbouring warehouse hastily constructed breeze block cells were hung with racks, bristling with meat hooks.

Outside stood what one soldier described as "a purpose-built shooting gallery".

A tiled foot-high plinth stood in a courtyard, with the brickwork behind it riddled with bullets at head height.

The CNN and Reuters versions of this story left out the meat hooks.

Now this next bit is interesting... what should the Arab world say about this?

The only certainties were that they had suffered appallingly and that their bodies were shown an utter lack of respect after death - even to call it a mass grave suggests a dignity that simply was not there.

Bags of remains lined the walls while the empty coffins were stacked five deep.

In the centre of the warehouse coffins containing bags were arranged neatly in rows, but the whole operation seemed to have been hurriedly abandoned.

The coffins appeared newly constructed, suggesting the remains could finally have been destined for burial, perhaps as a last-ditch attempt to hide them before the coalition invaded.

One Muslim civilian who is travelling with the British Army as an Arabic interpreter spoke of his shock that these acts could have been perpetrated by people of his own faith.

Islam dictates that the dead should be washed, wrapped in a white cloth and buried facing Mecca, usually within 24 hours of death.

"You never leave bodies like that, never, even if it is your worst enemy," said the young academic, who has asked not to be named for fear of reprisals against him or his family.

"They must not be left like that, it is the ultimate disrespect. It is bad, very bad."

I wondered whether Al Jazeera had anything to say about that, so I went to their English site. It was just about dead. Took about a minute to load the front page, but I found a link to a story with the following headline:

Remains of 200 killed in Iran-Iraq war found near Basra

I couldn't get anything but the headline to load. But the headline does not sound promising.