April 05, 2003

Makeshift morgue found near Basra

British forces said on Saturday they had found the remains of as many as 200 people in a barracks near Iraq?s second city of Basra and they were sending in forensic experts to investigate.

THEY DISCOVERED SOME bodies in a barracks between Basra and Az Zubayr,? a British military spokeswoman at war headquarters in Qatar told Reuters. Another spokesman said the remains of around 200 people had been found in a warehouse.
       He said the Third Regiment of the Royal Artillery had made a preliminary search of a compound on the road between Basra and Az Zubayr before spending the night there.
       
The following morning they made a more detailed search and on opening the doors of one warehouse they came across bags full of bones which the spokesman described as ?desiccated.?

Pool television pictures showed dozens of simple wooden coffins and plastic bags full of bones which a military spokesman on the scene said might be from a previous war as they were quite old.
       Britain?s Press Association reported that in a building adjacent to the ?makeshift morgue,? soldiers found catalogues and photographs of the dead. Most had died from gunshot wounds to the head, but others were mutilated beyond recognition, their faces burned and swollen in the faded black and white photographs, according to the PA dispatch.

Outside of the building stood what one of the British soldiers described as ?a purpose-built shooting gallery.?
       A tiled foot-high platform stood in a courtyard, with the brickwork behind it pockmarked with bullet holes. Behind that lay a drainage ditch, the PA report said.
[...]
It was not immediately clear who the dead might be or how long they had been there but the spokesman noted that it was unusual for bodies to remain unburied given the Muslim tradition of burying bodies within 24 hours of death.

This probably won't be hard to believe, but I am almost physically ill blogging this story...
Is this whole country an abattoir or what??
Talk about your "heart of darkness."
And I'm sure that Coalition forces will find more grisly stuff from the death cult that has been running this country.
Dear God have mercy.
I know with more certainty with every day that passes that my country has done a very, very good thing indeed in liberating this country from this gang of evil monsters.
And look at this inhumanity we must, even if it makes us sick at heart and sick to our stomachs, so that, as with the Holocaust, it doesn't happen again.
But I feel that just by being witnesses, we are touched by evil in a irrevocable way that hurts all of us.
Saddam and his minions have a lot to answer for.