www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/5220416.html
A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that's cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds. Few people have a better sense of the death rate in Iraq. Dhurgham Majed al Malik, 48, whose family has arranged burial services for generations, said that this spring, private cars and taxis with caskets lashed to their roofs arrived at a rate of 6,500 a month. Malik said that the daily tide of cars bearing coffins has been a barometer of Iraq's violence for years. The number of burials rose and fell several times during Saddam Hussein's persecution of Shiites, and it soared again during the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Then in the 1990s, the daily average fell to 150 or less, Malik said. With the current war, the burials again reached 300 daily. In the early days of the war, some bodies brought for burial had been victims of Saddam, found in unmarked mass graves. September 2005 marked a high point after a stampede during a Shiite festival killed hundreds on a Baghdad bridge. More than 1,300 were buried in a single day, Malik said. Najaf is considered the third-most important holy site for Shiite Muslims, after Mecca and Medina. The Wadi al Salam cemetery its name translates as "Valley of Peace" dates to the 7th century. Its mud-brown jumble of crypts and rectangular and domed brick and marble tombs stretches to the horizon. Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law Imam Ali is said to have pronounced it the entrance to paradise.
|
http://csua.com/feed/