By Xinhua,
Baghdad : U.S. troops found a mass grave containing up to 30 bodies near a restive town northeast of Baghdad, the U.S. military said on 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 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 U.S. forces could not tell whether the bodies had been tortured at the time of the death, the statement said, adding that the remains will be moved to a cemetery near Muqdadiyah.
Late March, the U.S. forces found a mass grave with 14 bodies in northern Muqdadiya town, near another mass grave with 37 bodies unearthed few days earlier.
The area where mass graves discovered has long been under control of the al-Qaida Iraqi network before the U.S. 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-Qaida militant groups and hotbed of insurgency and sectarian violence since the U.S.-led invasion broke out in 2003.