BAGHDAD, 8 November 2007 — The Iraqi government yesterday downplayed a US report that Iraq’s largest dam was in danger of catastrophic failure and could cause as many as 500,000 civilian deaths. The dam, built in the 1980s on the Tigris River near the northern city of Mosul, made headlines last month after a report by the US Army Corps of Engineers said potential erosion of the dam’s foundation could cause it to buckle under the water pressure, drowning Mosul and parts of Baghdad.
“These are exaggerated and swelled reports,” Iraqi Minister of Water Resources Abdul-Latif Jamal Rashid said yesterday. “We have some geological problems with this dam, but it’s nothing new,” Rashid said at a news conference at his ministry building in east Baghdad.
In his latest quarterly report, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the US special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, found that the dam does not appear to meet “international standards for risk and reliability.”
Meanwhile, the top Iraqi police commander in the southern city of Basra survived a roadside bombing yesterday, the second attempt on his life in a week. Maj. Gen. Jalil Khalif said he escaped unhurt from the attack in an area called Saad Square in the center of Basra city. He said four of his bodyguards were wounded in the blast.
Khalif survived a similar bombing on Saturday, along with Basra’s Iraqi army chief Gen. Mohan Al-Fraiji. Two of their guards were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a routine patrol. British troops are set to hand over security control of Basra, Iraq’s second most populous province, to Iraqi forces in December. Iraqi soldiers found 17 decomposed bodies early yesterday north of the Iraqi capital, an Iraqi army officer said.
The mass grave was discovered in an area of brush near a school in Hashimiyat, an area west of Baquba, said Col. Ihsan Al-Shimari. Baquba, some 60 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, is the provincial capital of Diyala — a troubled area where Al-Qaeda in Iraq is believed to have a strong presence. Many of the bodies were handcuffed and blindfolded, Shimari said.
He said he believed the bodies were from passengers kidnapped at fake checkpoints on a nearby road leading to Baquba. There were no identification cards on the bodies, and Iraqi investigators were working to identify the victims, Shimari said. Based on the degree of decomposition, Shimari said he believed 13 of the corpses had been there more than three months. The remaining four appeared to have been killed a few days ago, he said.
The discovery came a day after the US military announced that another mass grave had been found in Iraq’s western Anbar province. Iraqi soldiers found 22 bodies in the Lake Tharthar area on Saturday during a joint operation with US forces, the military said in a statement.
