IRAQ: Drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam ( the Valley of Peace) cemetery by at least one-third in the past six months

Record ID: 572693

  • Title: IRAQ: Drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam ( the Valley of Peace) cemetery by at least one-third in the past six months
  • Date: 30th November 2007
  • Summary: (MER- ) NAJAF, IRAQ (NOVEMBER 14, 2007) (REUTERS) THE VALLEY OF PEACE CEMETERY IN THE HOLY CITY OF NAJAF MORE OF GRAVES IN THE VALLEY OF PEACE CEMETERY MARBLE TOPPED GRAVES ADORNED WITH FLOWERS AND COLOURFUL FLAGS MORE OF MARBLE TOPPED GRAVES WITH PICTURES OF SLAIN PEOPLE AND COLOURFUL FLAGS/ PEOPLE VISITING CEMETERY RELATIVES VISITING CEMETERY/ PICTURES AND FLOWERS ADORNING TOMBS TOMBS ADORNED WITH FLOWERS/ PICTURES OF SLAIN PEOPLE ON TOP OF GRAVES/ TWO WOMEN WAILING NEAR GRAVE MORE OF TWO WOMEN WAILING NEAR GRAVE MEN UNLOADING COFFIN FROM TOP OF BUS MOURNERS GATHERING NEAR BUS MEN TAKING BODY TO WASHING PLACE BEFORE BURIAL (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) SHEIKH SADEQ ZAHER TAABAN, UNDERTAKER SAYING: "We used to bury 400 to 450 bodies per month, this was unfamiliar thing before, burying such big numbers until the last six to seven months. (QS: what about the last month?) As for the last month there has been a noticeable decline. In October, we buried 42 bodies. The number has dropped from 80, 90 and 100 to 40."
  • Embargoed: 15th December 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Industry
  • Reuters ID: LVAE4W73DOFFLC6T1RUYFOQWJKA7
  • Story Text: For the first time in a long while, the "Valley of Peace" cemetery in Iraq's holy Shi'ite city of Najaf is living up to its name.
    The sprawling Wadi al-Salam cemetery in Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, is one of the biggest in the world.
    For more than a year it has also been one of the busiest, with grave-diggers and undertakers working around the clock burying thousands of Iraqis killed in sectarian violence.
    It is one of many of Iraq's cemeteries that have been grim barometers of the violence in the country.
    With declines in Iraqi civilian and U.S. military casualties in the past two months, cemetery officials are also reporting sharp falls in business. In Najaf, business has dropped almost tenfold.

    "We used to bury 400 to 450 bodies per month, this was an unfamiliar thing before, burying such big numbers until the last six to seven months. (QS: what about the last month?) As for the last month there has been a noticeable decline. In October, we buried 42 bodies. The number has dropped from 80, 90 and 100 to 40," said Sadeq Zaher Taaban, an undertaker in the Valley of Peace cemetery.
    Marble-topped graves and brick tombs seem to stretch to the horizon in the vast cemetery. Brightly coloured flags and strings of plastic flowers adorn tombs. Old women draped in black mourning garments brush away dust and tidy grave sites.
    Grave digger Haider Abdul Amir, said that work was so busy in the cemetery up to three months ago, they used to work from morning until night.

    "Three months ago, we were so busy. We used to go to work early in the morning and leave to go home late at night. My brother used to work with six men and I worked with five men as I was the sixth. I'm telling you a fact.
    Thank God, work has decreased now. As you see I'm working with my brother only, we did not bring a stranger to work with us. We work on (building) three to four graves and leave to go home."
    Bodies are sent to the Najaf cemetery from around Iraq and across the Middle East. Each of the funeral directors' offices specialises in dealing with bodies from different areas.
    Adnan al-Safi, a spokesman for Wadi al-Salam, said the cemetery received the bodies of about 900 Iraqis who died violently in July.
    Almost half of those were regarded as "unknowns" -- bodies either so badly disfigured they could not be identified or which were not claimed by relatives after a week in the morgue.
    The figure for all those killed in violence almost halved to 472 in August, Safi said, and fell further to 315 in September. Last month it was

    "In August, we received 450 to 500 bodies of martyrs, assassinations and unknowns. In September the number reached to 315 from unknown, martyrs and assassinations. These numbers dropped greatly in October and November," Safi said.
    Safi said work at the cemetery spiked soon after the Samarra mosque bombing in February 2006.
    The bombing of the revered, golden-domed al-Askari Shi'ite mosque in predominantly Sunni Arab Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, unleashed a tidal wave of sectarian reprisal killings which pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.
    Najaf's experience has been roughly mirrored at the smaller and predominantly Sunni Arab al-Karkh cemetery on Baghdad's western outskirts, although not to the same stark degree.
    The extra presence of 30,000 U.S. troops, improving Iraqi security forces and the growing number of neighbourhood police units formed by tribal leaders, have been credited for the falls in casualty figures in the past few months.
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