The remains of 15,000 people killed by the regime of Saddam Hussein have been found in mass graves discovered last week, according to reports.
The Iraqi National Congress said today that four sites had been discovered in the central city of Hilla, site of ancient Babylon.
'Citizens are excavating with great sadness and no assistance, collecting bones. Mothers and fathers are trying to identify their children with ID cards and scraps of clothes that they were last seen in,' a spokesman said.
The Congress appealed to the US Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), non-governmental organisations and human rights groups 'to help the Iraqi people account for hundreds of thousands of missing.'
A US army official here could not confirm the find in the graves, situated around 100km south of the capital, Baghdad.
The International Committee of the Red Cross announced at the end of April that it had contacted coalition forces to try to check numerous reports about mass graves in Iraq.
Another mass grave was unearthed near the southern city of Basra.
The remains of 126 bodies have been found, making it one of the largest graves found up to then in the south.
Experts said the grave appeared to be recent and is not a leftover from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
Only about a dozen bodies have been identified so far, many being unearthed with their hands tied and blindfolds still wrapped around their heads.
