BRITISH investigators believe that they have located the graves of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed by Saddam Hussein’s regime since the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

Professor Margaret Cox, who leads a team of forensic archaeologists from Bournemouth University in Dorset, said that the official number of mass grave sites was more than 50, with as many as six burial pits at each site.

The team of eight forensic archaeologists arrived in Iraq eight days ago. They were commissioned by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to search for evidence of genocide. Their grisly task involves examining the bodies of the dead to establish when and how they died.

The team believes it has located the graves of at least 300,000 people, although exact numbers will be impossible to determine until the sites have been excavated.

As well as hastily dug pits into which victims’ bodies were bulldozed, the team has found other more elaborate grave sites and written records giving details of the victims and their alleged “crimes”. Many are believed to have been murdered as reprisals for the uprisings that followed the Gulf War.

Professor Cox, who has investigated claims of genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, said: “In the first grave we found bodies of people who had been blindfolded and then had their hands tied before being herded into the graves and shot. It would appear that the old regime was propped up with the bones of the Iraqi people buried beneath its sands.”

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