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Official Says Shiite Party Suppressed Body Count
The Feb. 22 bombing of the Shiites' Askariya shrine in Samarra set off a wave of retaliatory violence against Sunnis. The resulting death toll is in question.
(By Khalid Mohammed -- Associated Press)
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Hassan also said refrigerated trucks had been borrowed from the state pharmaceutical agency to handle the overflow of corpses following the mosque bombing. He said only three of the trailers were brought in, however, rather than six to seven. "It was overwhelming work to do, but we managed it," he said.
On Monday, two trucks with Thermo King refrigerated trailers were parked in a lot between the Health Ministry and the morgue, and a third refrigerated trailer was seen over the weekend in a separate parking lot off the morgue. Both parking lots were closed. From a distance, there was no clear sign the trailers were in use.
Health Ministry drivers volunteered Monday that two of the refrigerated trailers had been brought to the ministry parking lot during the violence following the mosque bombing, and that two other trailers also were brought in. The drivers said they saw bodies being placed in the trailers. Their accounts could not be independently verified.
On Sunday, as a Washington Post reporter briefly visited the morgue office, five bodies were brought in from a town just outside Baghdad. All were neatly dressed men, all had their hands bound, and all had been shot in the back of the head. Morgue officials took the bodies to one of the refrigerated trailers. No mention of the five appeared in news reports.
Access to the morgue was restricted, a sharp contrast from the scene on Feb. 27, when men were allowed to enter the morgue to search among the many bloodied corpses for family members and anxious relatives swarmed around a computer screen that showed photos of the unidentified dead.
Over the weekend, families were kept outside a gate and made to register to see the photos on the computer. No access was allowed to the morgue itself. A man dressed in black and carrying a radio kept watch on the crowd.
Other Washington Post staff contributed to this report.
