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CNN Live At Daybreak
Mass Graveyard Found in Kirkuk
Aired April 18, 2003 - 06:32 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: In "The New York Times," you'll read of an account of a grizzly discovery from the old Iraq, a mass graveyard found in a weedy field in northern Iraq.
CNN's Jane Arraf joins us live now from Kirkuk.
Good morning -- Jane.
JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.
Well, there are certainly more questions here than answers. We are in this field, which is actually the edge of the military base. And as you can see behind me, there are regular graves here, some of them. We've got nine graves carefully buried, obviously people that were not associated or buried in a hurry.
Now, these may have been civilians who were associated with the nearby community, according to local people. But the mystery is the rest of this graveyard. Now, it is part of the military base, but you can also see rows and rows of mounds of what look like people who were buried in a hurry.
Now, these are quite old, all of them. They either go back to 1991 or even before that, according to local people. And two of them have been excavated. Now, they apparently exhumed the bodies on Wednesday, by local people trying to find out who exactly is buried there.
Now, local officials say that they still don't know. U.S. Special Forces have come to take measurements of this field, but they don't know what's underneath this. And what Kurdish officials say is that this could be the first of many places like this.
Now, there may have been atrocities committed here and people are buried here from that, or it may be a regular military graveyard. It is part of the military base. Right now, we just do not know -- Carol.
COSTELLO: It just must be so difficult for families, because there are many families throughout Iraq searching for loved ones who have been missing for years.
ARRAF: That is one of the terribly sad things about the history of this country. It's just years and years of grief.
And in the last few weeks, we've been going around talking to people, some relatives of Iraqi soldiers who died in this latest war, and it's just another layer of those years of fighting that have resulted in close to, by conservative estimates, maybe one million Iraqi soldiers who never came home from the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War and this latest war.
Now, one million people is extraordinary. It's the size of this city of Kirkuk really, the number of war dead. And you're absolutely right, Carol. A lot of times the relatives never know.
We were at an air base here last week -- one of the military bases here, rather, where we went to the morgue where there was evidence of Iraqi soldiers who had been, and who are still there, who had been very recently buried. And also all of the records just lying around, some of them burned in the looting. Now, these were death certificates of people whose families have been dying to know what happened from 10 years ago, from longer. And they probably will never know -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Understand. Jane Arraf reporting live from Kirkuk. She'll bring us up-to-date when we get more new information out of northern Iraq.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Aired April 18, 2003 - 06:32 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: In "The New York Times," you'll read of an account of a grizzly discovery from the old Iraq, a mass graveyard found in a weedy field in northern Iraq.
CNN's Jane Arraf joins us live now from Kirkuk.
Good morning -- Jane.
JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.
Well, there are certainly more questions here than answers. We are in this field, which is actually the edge of the military base. And as you can see behind me, there are regular graves here, some of them. We've got nine graves carefully buried, obviously people that were not associated or buried in a hurry.
Now, these may have been civilians who were associated with the nearby community, according to local people. But the mystery is the rest of this graveyard. Now, it is part of the military base, but you can also see rows and rows of mounds of what look like people who were buried in a hurry.
Now, these are quite old, all of them. They either go back to 1991 or even before that, according to local people. And two of them have been excavated. Now, they apparently exhumed the bodies on Wednesday, by local people trying to find out who exactly is buried there.
Now, local officials say that they still don't know. U.S. Special Forces have come to take measurements of this field, but they don't know what's underneath this. And what Kurdish officials say is that this could be the first of many places like this.
Now, there may have been atrocities committed here and people are buried here from that, or it may be a regular military graveyard. It is part of the military base. Right now, we just do not know -- Carol.
COSTELLO: It just must be so difficult for families, because there are many families throughout Iraq searching for loved ones who have been missing for years.
ARRAF: That is one of the terribly sad things about the history of this country. It's just years and years of grief.
And in the last few weeks, we've been going around talking to people, some relatives of Iraqi soldiers who died in this latest war, and it's just another layer of those years of fighting that have resulted in close to, by conservative estimates, maybe one million Iraqi soldiers who never came home from the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War and this latest war.
Now, one million people is extraordinary. It's the size of this city of Kirkuk really, the number of war dead. And you're absolutely right, Carol. A lot of times the relatives never know.
We were at an air base here last week -- one of the military bases here, rather, where we went to the morgue where there was evidence of Iraqi soldiers who had been, and who are still there, who had been very recently buried. And also all of the records just lying around, some of them burned in the looting. Now, these were death certificates of people whose families have been dying to know what happened from 10 years ago, from longer. And they probably will never know -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Understand. Jane Arraf reporting live from Kirkuk. She'll bring us up-to-date when we get more new information out of northern Iraq.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
