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Bodies uncovered in 2 Iraqi school yards

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published April 18, 2007

BAGHDAD - Police in Ramadi uncovered 17 decomposing corpses buried beneath two school yards in a district that until recently was under the control of al-Qaida fighters. At least 85 people were killed or found dead across the country Tuesday.

The adult bodies were discovered in the Anbar provincial capital after students and teachers returned to the schools a week ago and noticed an odor and dogs digging in the area, police Maj. Laith al-Dulaimi said.

He said one body had not yet been recovered from a separate burial site behind one of the schools because authorities feared it was booby-trapped with a bomb.

Ramadi had been a stronghold of Sunni insurgents and al-Qaida fighters until recently, when the U.S. forces in the region and the Iraqi government successfully negotiated with many local tribal leaders to split them off from the more militant insurgent groups.

Thousands of young Sunni men have joined the police force in Anbar province and have taken up the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq, the umbrella organization that includes al-Qaida.

In a sign that Shiite death squads are on the move again after more than two months of quiescence, 25 bodies, most tortured, were found dumped in Baghdad on Tuesday. The three-day total, after several weeks of much smaller numbers, was 67.

In addition to the deaths in Baghdad and Ramadi, officials reported that 43 other people were killed or found dead across Iraq Tuesday in nearly two dozen other violent incidents at sites that included Mosul, Fallujah, Baqubah and Tal Afar.

Fast Facts:

Health crisis

New public health statistics, released Tuesday by the World Health Organization, quantify how desperate life in Iraq has become:

- Car bombs and other violence kill an average of at least 100 people a day.

- 70 percent of Iraqis lack regular access to clean water.

- 80 percent lack toilets that do not contaminate water sources.

- Diarrhea and respiratory infections account for two-thirds of the deaths of children under 5, and 21 percent of Iraqi children are chronically malnourished.

- Almost 70 percent of critically injured patients die in the hospital because of lack of staff, drugs and equipment.

Other developments

- Hundreds of residents of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, crowded into a huge tent erected Tuesday in front of the governor's office for the start of a three-day sit-in to demand his resignation. Residents have long complained of poor city services; demands for Gov. Mohammed al-Waili's ouster were also thought to stem from political disagreements.

- The U.S. military announced the death of a Marine from a "nonhostile incident" Monday during a patrol in Anbar province.

[Last modified April 18, 2007, 02:31:55]