At mass burial site, villagers dig, weep

Human-rights groups think there are mass graves all over Iraq.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Villagers pulled body after body from a mass grave in central Iraq today, exhuming the remains of up to 3,000 people they suspect were killed during the 1991 Shiite revolt against Saddam Hussein's regime. Uncounted bodies remained unearthed at the site, officials said.
By every indication, the mass grave in a village outside Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, is the largest found in Iraq since U.S. forces overthrew Saddam and his Baath Party government last month.
Hundreds of people from nearby towns and villages watched from behind a barbed-wire barrier as sets of remains were pulled from the field and set aside wrapped in plastic bags, sheets and blankets. Some of the bodies' skulls still had tufts of long hair, and officials said they probably were women.
Mourners
Many of the onlookers were weeping, and some chanted: "There is no God but God, and the Baath [Party] is the enemy of God." Several women were holding pictures of their missing men.
Rafed Husseini, a doctor leading the group of local men doing the digging, said a total of 3,000 bodies had either been retrieved or located in the past nine days. About half remain unidentified; the rest have been identified mainly through documents found on the bodies, Husseini said.
Villagers from Mahaweel first organized the dig by bringing in a bulldozer to open up the site.
"We are organizing it, and we are digging," said Abuzaid Dinar, the village headman. He said his dead father and brother were buried somewhere in the area, where several separate mass graves were spread out over about a half-mile-square area.
Victims of uprising?
The excavation today came two days after Iraqis pulled bodies from a newly discovered mass grave near Basra, the country's second-largest city. That site in southern Iraq was thought to contain remains of up to 150 Shiite Muslims killed by Saddam's regime after a rebellion in 1999.
Human-rights groups say they think Iraq is dotted with mass graves, many filled with victims of Saddam's brutal excesses. Villagers said that appeared to be the case with the latest site.
"About 20 percent of them were buried alive, because they had no bullet wounds, but their hands were tied and they were blindfolded," said Ameer Shumri, an official from the governor's office in Hillah.
Shiites rose up against Saddam after the 1991 Gulf War but were crushed by the Iraqi leader and his police and military apparatus. Thousands of Shiites were killed.
Many Shiites had expected more U.S. help in their revolt. Some have expressed bitterness, saying the United States under former President Bush had not intervened to save them from Saddam's wrath.
Sukna al-Jbouri, who stood beside the barbed wire, said she had come to find her son Hilal, who was 19 when he was arrested by soldiers in 1991.
"I was walking with my son in the street, and the army came and picked him up," she said. "I tried to stop them, but they took him; I don't know why."
Offering support
U.S. Marines, who arrived earlier today to secure the site, said they would be bringing water and camouflage netting to protect onlookers from the blistering sun.
"We are to help facilitate the reunion of victims and families," said Capt. David Romley from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, who added that his unit had heard about the site only two days earlier. "They want to excavate the site themselves."
"We can take this evidence and present it to a future Iraqi judiciary," he said.
Elsewhere in Iraq, a U.S. soldier with the 101st Airborne Division died and another was injured today after their vehicle overturned in northern Iraq, officers and witnesses at the scene said.
The soldier, who was not immediately identified, was part of a convoy driving from the northern city of Mosul to Irbil, a city 50 miles to the east.
A recovery vehicle that was towing an Army truck rolled over and crushed the cabin, killing the driver and injuring another soldier inside, an officer said. No other vehicles were involved in the accident.
War-crimes complaint
Meanwhile, a left-wing candidate in Belgium's parliamentary elections lodged a war-crimes complaint today against U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of American forces in Iraq.
Lawyer Jan Fermon presented the complaint against Franks and a Marine officer he identified as Col. Brian P. McCoy to Belgium's federal prosecutors' office despite recent changes in the country's war-crimes law to prevent such charges against Americans.
Fermon said he was representing 16 Iraqi civilians injured or bereaved by U.S. attacks, though he gave few details.
"This is not a symbolic action; my clients want an independent inquiry into what happened," Fermon told reporters as he arrived at the prosecutors' office. Fermon is running in Sunday's elections for the small, far-left Resist group.
Fermon said the accusations against Franks focused on the bombing of civilian areas, indiscriminate shooting by U.S. troops when they entered Baghdad, and the failure to stop looting. He charged McCoy with ordering troops to fire on ambulances.
U.S. response
The case has provoked anger from Washington. America's most senior military officer suggested the complaint and earlier charges against other U.S. officials could jeopardize Belgium's role as a host for NATO and European Union meetings.
"It's looked upon by the U.S. government as a very, very serious situation," Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday on a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels. "It ... clearly could have a huge impact on where we gather."
To head off such complaints, the government last month rushed through changes to the laws, which were introduced in the early 1990s to authorize Belgian courts to try genocide and other war crimes wherever they occurred.
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