Mass Graves

Some notable incidents of mass violence Mexico's drug war over past year: — May 13: Mutilated bodies of 49 people dumped on highway in northern Mexico. — May 9: Dismembered bodies of 18 victims left near Mexico's second-largest city, Guadalajara. — May 5: Bodies of 23 people found hanging from bridge or decapitated and dumped near city hall in border city of Nuevo Laredo. — April 17: Mutilated bodies of 14 men left in minivan in downtown Nuevo Laredo, along with message from undisclosed drug gang.

Some notable incidents of mass violence Mexico's drug war over past year: — May 13: Mutilated bodies of 49 people dumped on highway in northern Mexico. — May 9: Dismembered bodies of 18 victims left near Mexico's second-largest city, Guadalajara. — May 5: Bodies of 23 people found hanging from bridge or decapitated and dumped near city hall in border city of Nuevo Laredo. — April 17: Mutilated bodies of 14 men left in minivan in downtown Nuevo Laredo, along with message from undisclosed drug gang.

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Reports of dozens of bodies being dumped near a large forest first emerged as human rights groups warned that security forces loyal to incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo were abducting political opponents after the disputed election. Now the United Nations believes that up to 80 bodies may have been moved to a building nestled among shacks in a pro-Gbagbo neighborhood. Investigators have tried to go there several times, and even made it as far as the building’s front door before truckloads of men with guns showed up and forced them to leave.

Mexico's congress passed a law Monday to recognize and protect the rights of crime victims, a longstanding demand in a country where more than 47,500 people have died in 5 ½ years of drug-related violence, and thousands more have disappeared. The law covers the dead, wounded, kidnapped or missing whether they are ordinary civilians or are members of drug cartels and other crime gangs. It also would cover victims of other crimes, like extortion. The measure has now been approved by both houses of congress and must be signed into law by the president, who supports the move.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The bodies of 41 Kuwaitis believed killed during the 1991 Persian Gulf war have been unearthed in southern Iraq, one of 295 mass graves containing thousands of Saddam Hussein's victims uncovered in the two years since US-led forces invaded and ousted the dictator, Iraq's Human Rights Minister said yesterday. In a telephone interview, Bakhtiar Amin said he informed the Kuwaiti government of the discovery three days ago. The bodies were found in a mass grave in the city of Amarah, 180 miles southeast of Baghdad.

VIENNA — At least two mass graves containing dozens of people killed by the Nazis have been found on property used by the Austrian army, government officials said yesterday. An army statement suggested that some of the remains may be those of US pilots shot down and imprisoned toward the end of World War II. Police Colonel Rudolf Gollia, an interior ministry spokesman, said his ministry plans talks with the owners of the site to discuss exhumation, adding it was not clear whether the army owned the property or was renting it. The mass graves are located in bomb craters...

BELGRADE -- Serbian territory has 17 mass graves containing bodies of ethnic Albanians slain during Kosovo's 1998-99 war, a former interior minister said yesterday, accusing current authorities of a coverup. Dusan Mihajlovic, who served as police chief in the government that ousted former president Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, said Serbia's conservative authorities are reluctant to prosecute those responsible for the killings. Mihajlovic, who was in charge until early this year, said in a statement that "police have done their part of the job. They have documentation about the...

MADRID - Former dictator General Francisco Franco waged a systematic campaign to kill off political opponents during and after the Spanish Civil War, a judge said yesterday as he opened the first formal probe into that divisive time. Judge Baltasar Garzon of the National Court ordered the urgent exhumation of at least 19 mass graves, which are believed to hold the remains of some of the tens of thousands of people who went missing during the 1936-39 war and the early stages of Franco's subsequent rightwing rule.

KRAING TA CHAN, Cambodia -- The older Cambodian excitedly called out the younger one's name, smiled broadly, and threw an arm around his shoulder. It might have looked like a scene at a school reunion, except that Chum Mey, 75, was a victim of Khmer Rouge torture, Him Huy, 50, was an executioner, and their encounter in a Cambodian killing field was part of an attempt to lay to rest some of the ghosts of this nation's horrors in the 1970s. About 1.7 million people died under the Khmer Rouge's four-year dictatorship, yet little has been done...

TRIPOLI, Libya - Libyan officials said yesterday that they have found the site of a mass grave believed to hold the remains of more than 1,200 prisoners killed by Moammar Khadafy's regime after a 1996 prison uprising. Officials learned the site of the massacre after capturing former security guards who revealed its location, as well as receiving witness accounts. Excavation has not begun in the desert field outside the white walls of the notorious Abu Salim prison in Tripoli, although several bone fragments and pieces of clothing have been found in the topsoil.

The graves of military veterans would no longer go accidentally unmarked on Veterans Day or Memorial Day if state lawmakers pass a bill aimed at improving the communication surrounding the deaths of veterans. Currently, when a veteran dies, the funeral director files a notice with the local board of health, which is supposed to notify the veterans' graves officer, the local official responsible for caring for veterans' graves. But state Representative Shaunna O'Connell, Republican of Taunton and the bill's sponsor, said communication tends to break down and often the...

REYHANLI, Turkey - After days of relentless shelling and sniper attacks, thousands of Syrian refugees streamed across the border into Turkey with horrific accounts Friday of mass graves, massacres, and burned-out homes. The latest reports of escalating violence fueled accusations that President Bashar Assad is rushing to stamp out as much of the year-old uprising as he can before a UN-brokered cease-fire next week. The trigger for the new waves of refugees was an offensive in Idlib Province, which borders Turkey and has become increasingly rebellious against the Assad regime.

A mass grave has been found containing the remains of 23 communist soldiers believed to have been killed during the Tet Offensive, seen by many as the turning point of the Vietnam War. Col. Nguyen Minh Hung of provincial military command in central Khanh Hoa province said Tuesday that construction workers who were expanding a highway found the site last week. He says it took 30 soldiers and militiamen six days to recover the remains, none of which were identified. The soldiers were believed to have been killed while withdrawing after...

BIN JAWWAD, Libya - Libyan government officials said Sunday they have uncovered a mass grave with 157 bodies of rebel fighters and civilians in an eastern town that was a major battleground during the country's 2011 civil war. It is the largest grave yet to be discovered from the conflict that began as a popular uprising and ended with the capture and killing of Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy last October. Nearly five months after the civil war ended, the country's new government is struggling to rebuild a national security force, unify the country's militias and tribes under its authority, and...

TRIPOLI, Libya - Libya's new leaders said yesterday that some prisoners held by revolutionary forces have been abused, but insisted the mistreatment was not systematic and pledged to tackle the problem. The United Nations released a report Monday detailing alleged torture and ill treatment in lockups controlled by the forces that overthrew Moammar Khadafy. The report says that Libyan revolutionaries still hold about 7,000 people, many of them sub-Saharan Africans who are in some cases suspected of being mercenaries hired by Khadafy.

TRIPOLI, Libya - Former Libyan strongman Moammar Khadafy was secretly buried in a desert grave yesterday, officials said, ending a four-day spectacle in which his bloody body was displayed to a public largely overjoyed about his ignominious end after decades of repressive rule. Like other leaders toppled in the Arab Spring uprisings, Khadafy was despised as a corrupt authoritarian ruler. But he was viewed here as more cruel and capricious than the presidents of Egypt or Tunisia, a man who would suddenly nationalize companies or hang dissident students, and force their...

BERLIN — Jewish organizations launched a joint effort yesterday to identify, protect, and memorialize thousands of forgotten Holocaust mass graves across eastern Europe. More than 2 million Jews in eastern Europe were rounded up by the German military and shot, their bodies left in unmarked mass graves, even before the Nazis began to organize mass killings at the gas chambers in death camps such as Auschwitz and Belzec. “Entire communities were wiped out and those few who by some miracle survived seldom returned,’’ Rabbi Andrew Baker of the American Jewish Committee told...

TOKYO — Two mass graves that may hold the remains of up to 2,000 Japanese soldiers have been discovered on Iwo Jima, one of the bloodiest and most iconic battlesites of World War II, a report said yesterday. A team of Japanese searchers has already discovered the remains of about 50 soldiers in two areas listed by the US military after the war as enemy cemeteries, one of which could contain as many as 2,000 bodies, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported. The discovery of the remains would be one of the biggest breakthroughs in decades toward finding the bodies of roughly...

TRIPOLI, Libya - Libyan officials said yesterday that they have found the site of a mass grave believed to hold the remains of more than 1,200 prisoners killed by Moammar Khadafy's regime after a 1996 prison uprising. Officials learned the site of the massacre after capturing former security guards who revealed its location, as well as receiving witness accounts. Excavation has not begun in the desert field outside the white walls of the notorious Abu Salim prison in Tripoli, although several bone fragments and pieces of clothing have been found in the topsoil.