BAGHDAD, 14 April 2003 — Young “death volunteers” are searching the streets of the Iraqi capital to collect the abandoned corpses of those killed in the fighting and offer them a final resting place, with or without an identity.
Hashem Kazem, a 34-year-old engineer, rummaged yesterday through the shell of a car in the Al-Zawara district near Baghdad’s zoo and emerged with some blackened bones.
He also grasped a passport photograph that miraculously survived the flames of a chubby man with a ginger mustache.
Kazem, wearing plastic gloves and a surgical face mask, put the bones on a stretcher covered in a white sheet and an Iraqi flag.
Further up the road, other volunteers found the burned bodies of a woman still hugging a child in a van. The ferocity of the fire had soldered the remains to the vehicle.
Yesterday morning the small group went through the same operation five times, extricating corpses from the furnaces in which they burned after finding themselves on the wrong road at the wrong time as US troops routed the forces of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
“On Monday in the Alawi area, I saw a police car with three people inside machine-gunned,” said Salam Jassem.
“I went up to an American tank and asked the soldiers if I could bury them. At first they said no but I insisted and they agreed,” said the 22-year-old, also an engineer.
Along with Salah Mohammad, a tailor, the pair removed the bodies and set aside their identity papers.
“We took the men to Karama hospital where a file was opened with their names,” said Jassem, in the hope relatives can be informed. That was the first operation by the “death volunteers” who have been joined by several more people. Each morning they gather at the Karama hospital and set off across the capital with three stretchers.
“Two days ago, in a street near the Information Ministry we found the body of Nizal Al-Azi, a senior figure in the Baath Party,” said Hussein Kazem, a 37-year-old teacher.
“He was in a car and dogs had already eaten half of his face.”
When the stretchers are full, they march off, a finger raised to heaven, chanting: “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad (PBUH) is His Prophet. Martyrs are beloved of God.”
On the streets, passers-by stop and place their right hand over their heart. Woman cry or shout and even looters come to a halt and lower their eyes. The stretcher bearers head to the old Maruf Al-Karihi cemetery.
Beside centuries-old tombs, lie 25 fresh graves bearing no names and decorated with a palm frond. Grave-diggers had been at work again before the volunteers arrived with two more shrouds.
In one were the remains of a family of six and a note reporting them as “unknown”. In the second, the bones of a Christian named “Issam Kanael Daniel.”
“We are Muslims, but we make no difference between religions,” said Karim Magid, a laborer aged 32.
“Every man, whatever his beliefs or his nationality, has the right to a grave. We would do the same for an American.”
After uttering a prayer for the dead, the group set off again on their gruesome rounds. One volunteer said his group had cleared 18 bodies from the streets during the morning.
