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At morgues, there are too many bodies to store

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published November 13, 2006

BAGHDAD - Baghdad's morgues are full.

With no space to store bodies, some victims of the sectarian slaughter are not being kept for relatives to claim, but photographed, numbered and interred in government cemeteries.

In October, a particularly bloody month for Iraqi civilians, about 1,600 bodies were turned in at the Baghdad central morgue, said its director, Dr. Abdul-Razaq al-Obaidi. The city's network of morgues, built to hold 130 bodies at most, now holds more than 500, he said.

Bodies are sent for burial every three or four days to make room for the daily intake, sometimes making identification impossible.

"We can't remove all the bodies just so that one can be identified and then put them all back in again," Obaidi said. "We simply don't have the staff."

While no one knows how many Iraqis have died, daily tallies of violent deaths by the Associated Press average nearly 45 a day.

The United Nations estimates 100 violent deaths daily, and the Iraqi health minister last week put civilian deaths over the entire 44 months since the U.S. invasion at about 150,000 - close to the U.N. figure and about three times the previously accepted estimates of 45,000 to 50,000.

In morgues across Iraq, bodies are being turned away.

"We have to reject them," Hadi al-Itabi said he told men who turned in the bodies of six slain border policeman last week at the morgue in Kut, southeast of Baghdad. "We just don't have enough cold storage."

Health Ministry officials are discussing how to handle the overflow of bodies. One proposal under consideration is the use of refrigerated trucks.

"That would solve a big problem for us," Obaidi said.

[Last modified November 13, 2006, 00:32:49]