USA Today October 13, 2004 Pg. 8
It is my personal opinion that this is a killing field,” said Greg Kehoe, a U.S. lawyer working with the Iraqi tribunal preparing a case against Saddam. “Someone used this field … to take bodies up there, and to take people up there and execute them.”
Kehoe, who spent five years in the former Yugoslavia, added: “I've … been doing gravesites for a long time, but I've never seen anything like this — women and children executed for no apparent reason.
“It's a perfect place for execution,” he said.
The victims are believed to be Kurds killed in 1987-88. One trench contains only women and children, apparently killed by small-arms fire. Another contains only men, apparently killed with machine guns.
Kehoe said the women and children had been taken from their villages with their belongings, including pots and pans. They were shot, then bulldozed into the trench.
Some women died holding their children. One young boy still held a ball in his tiny arms. The body of a mother clutches her baby. The infant was shot in the back of the head, the mother in the face. A thick stench hangs over the site.
“The youngest fetus we have was 18 to 20 fetal weeks. Tiny bones, femurs, thighbones the size of a matchstick,” said investigating anthropologist P. Willey of California.
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