By Xinhua,
Baghdad : US troops have found a mass grave of 30 bodies near a town northeast of the Iraqi capital, the military said Monday.
“Multi-National Division-North Soldiers Sunday discovered between 20-30 bodies buried in a mass grave south of Muqdadiyah, some 100 km northeast of Baghdad,” the US military said in a statement.
“All the bodies were badly decomposed and appear to have been at the site nearly eight months,” said the statement.
The team which discovered the mass grave could not say whether the bodies bore marks of torture, the statement said, adding that the remains will be moved to a cemetery near Muqdadiyah.
Late last month, the US forces found a mass grave with 14 bodies in northern Muqdadiya town, near another mass grave with 37 bodies unearthed a few days earlier.
The area where mass graves were discovered has long been under control of the Al Qaeda Iraqi network before the US and Iraqi troops launched major offensives there in late 2007.
Diyala province, which stretches from eastern edges of Baghdad to the Iranian border, has been the stronghold of Al Qaeda militant groups and hotbed of insurgency and sectarian violence since the US-led invasion.