Human Flower Project
Returning to Kurdistan
A woman laid flowers on one of the coffins at the airport in Najaf, Iraq, Wednesday. The remains of 150 Kurdish people were found by a local farmer three months ago buried in a mass grave nearby. “Tens of thousands of Kurds were killed, villages were razed, and many civilians were rounded up into camps in southern Iraq during Saddam’s ‘Anfal’ campaign against Kurds in 1987-1988.” This particular burial site was one of 45 mass graves found in Najaf. The coffins, draped in the Iraqi and Kurdish flags, were flown to Arbil, in the Kurdish region.
“Thousands of bodies” have been discovered in mass graves since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, “many of them believed to be Shi’ites killed during uprisings in the south in the 1990s.”
The remains of at least 15 more bodies were unearthed in a Shi’ite precint of Baghdad, today November 19.
A ceremony for 150 Kurds killed in Iraq and discovered in a mass grave near Najaf
Photo: Abu Shish, for Reuters