Bodies are Iranian soldiers, says Tehran

Bodies found by British forces near Basra in southern Iraq were those of Iranian soldiers killed during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, state-run Tehran radio reported today.

“We officially call on the International Committee of the Red Cross to carry out their responsibility and immediately take the bodies from the invading forces and hand them over to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the radio quoted General Mirfeisal Baqerzadeh, the head of Iran’s Committee for Searching for the Missing in Action, as saying.

British forces in southern Iraq said yesterday that they had found hundreds of boxes containing human remains in what they said was a warehouse near Zubayr.

The bodies appeared to be the remains of people who had died some time ago - not in the current fighting.

Baqerzadeh, who said an estimated 100 bodies were discovered at a military hospital near Basra, appeared to be referring to the same discovery, though the details he gave differed somewhat.

Baqerzadeh said the bodies had been located earlier during joint Iranian-Iraqi search missions in recent months in regions near Basra, Zubayr and Faw but the eruption of war and what he called the procrastination of the Iraqi government delayed their repatriation.

Iran and Iraq exchanged war prisoners just a day before the US-led invasion of Iraq, under the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Iran and Iraq have exchanged thousands of prisoners and remains of dead soldiers since the 1980-88 war ended with a UN-brokered ceasefire. The eight-year war left about a million soldiers dead or wounded on both sides.