POWS, WOUNDED AND KILLED SOLDIERS: MIDDLE EAST WATCH
NOTE: This is part of HRW report about 1991 Gulf war.
March 2 Boston Globe, describing the aftermath of the February 25 attack on the Iraqi convoy retreatin from Kuwait, reported that Allied soldiers were "burying hundreds of dead in shallow graves." The article quoted US and British troops who were burying the dead from this convoy. One U.S. officer told the Globe that some of the bodies would be taken to a grave registration site, where Kuwaiti and Saudi specialists would give them proper treatment under Muslim law.
The Independent on Sunday reported on March 3 that the burial work "was left to Saudi mortuary parties with US troops":
Sometimes trenches where Iraqis fell were used as mass graves, with sand pushed over corpses and marked with makeshift signs. A US spokesman said he did not know if the bodies would be exhumed and returned to Iraq, as it was a matter for the Saudis....
A US spokesman in Saudi Arabia acknowledged that mass burials were taking place well away from reporters, adding that the US would not get into a body count of dead Iraqi soldiers even though the conflict is over.
Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, in his February 27 press conference, also displayed a cavalier attitude toward the coalition forces' obligation to document enemy dead. Referring to the Iraqi front-line units in southern Kuwait, he said, "There's a very large number of dead in these units, a very, very large number of dead." Asked whether there would ever be an accounting, he said, "No, there will never be an exact count." He continued:
