IRAQ. Al-Mahawil. Babylon Province. 2004. Decomposed human remains at an exhumation of a mass grave. Two significant mass graves have been discovered near the al-Mahawil military base, located some twenty kilometers north of al-Hilla—one
located in an open field and containing the bodies of more than two thousand persons (“the al-Mahawil mass grave”) and a second
located some five kilometers away behind an abandoned brick factory containing the bodies of several hundred persons (“the al-Mahawil brick factory mass grave”). A third
mass grave is suspected to exist on the premises of the military base itself. At least one other mass grave, just south of al-Hilla in the village of Imam Bakr, contained an additional forty bodies from the same period. In all these sites the bodies were buried enmasse, in contact with one another, rather than in individual plots. Mass graves in this sense are unusual, and almost always signify that the deaths were the result of mass atrocities or natural disasters.