Skeletons, many wearing clothes and blindfolded, jut out from the desert sands in south-western Iraq where forensics experts have unearthed at least two mass graves of victims from the brutal suppression of a 1991 Shiite uprising.

The remains of 22 bodies were found today in a mass grave south of Najaf dating back apparently to the 1991 Shiite uprising against Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces, police said.