News-Info-Alerts

Re: Iranian War Unknowns Buried

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: April 24, 2003

A couple of weeks ago coalition forces found a storage facility (among other things) stacked with warehoused human remains. Although initially unclear exactly who the numerous remains represented, the Iranian government issued a statement within hours that claimed the remains as unrepatriated war dead from the Iraq-Iran war period. Presumably the following refers to either the warehoused unknowns or mass graves discovered and opened.

"Unknown martyrs' farewell ceremony

Tehran, April 24 - Coinciding with Imam Hussain's Arbaein (40th day of his martyrdom in Karbala) commemoration services, a farewell ceremony with five unknown martyrs was held on Tuesday night in the east end of Tehran.

Organized by the mobilization Basij headquarters of the east district of Tehran, the commemoration service was held after performing the daily evening prayers at Malek Ashtar headquarters.

The mortuary procession of the unidentified martyrs, too, was performed along Tehran's Pirouzi street, and the sacred remains of them were buried in the graveyard of Imamzadeh Malek Khatoun, at Atabak intersection of Pirouzi.

In a similar commemoration service, the remains of 20 unidentified Iranian soldiers martyred in the 1980-88 Iraqi imposed war were buried in Isfahan's cemetery on Wednesday to the tears of hundreds of people.

The remains had been unearthed in Iran's southern and southwestern regions, where the former battlefields with Iraq lay.

Hundreds of people, among them families of those missing in action (MIA), participated in the funeral of the soldiers earlier in the day.

Copyright 2002, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting News Network sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. "