Grave May Yield Kuwaiti Remains

An Iraqi group that opposed Saddam Hussein said Friday that it had found a mass grave with the remains of at least 40 Kuwaiti prisoners of war and that it believed that up to 600 bodies were buried there.

The Iraqi National Congress said tests had confirmed that the bodies discovered in Habbaniyah near Baghdad were those of at least some of the 600 Kuwaitis listed as missing after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of its neighbor.

“A group from the INC went this morning to examine the site and found 40 bodies and many more remain [to be] unearthed,” a statement said.

Several mass graves have been discovered across Iraq since U.S.-led forces toppled Hussein’s regime last month.

U.S. defense officials said last week that Kuwaiti and U.S. experts were investigating whether a mass grave found near the southern city of Samawah contained the remains of missing Kuwaitis.

Hussein’s government had said that all Kuwaiti prisoners were released. It held talks with officials from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in Amman, Jordan, before the recent war to discuss the fate of the missing.