HELWEH: Police found a mass grave on Friday containing 11 skeletons they believe to be the remains of victims of sectarian bloodshed that swept Iraq in 2006 and 2007, an AFP correspondent reported.
The grave was found in the Helweh district, some 35 kilometers (around 20 miles) west of the mainly Sunni Arab city of Samarra where Al-Qaeda militants attacked a revered Shia shrine in 2006 and again in 2007, stoking communal violence that killed tens of thousands of people, the correspondent said.
Police said they believed the remains, found close to the arid shores of Lake Tharthar, had been buried three or four years ago, judging by their state of decomposition.
During the wave of tit-for-tat killings unleashed by the Samarra mosque attacks, victims were frequently abducted from their homes and their bodies dumped by the roadside, on wasteland or in shallow graves.
