KARBALA-BAGHDAD, May 2: Hundreds of human remains were retrieved from a mass grave near Karbala by local residents on Friday.

Diggers aided by a bulldozer worked at excavating the grave discovered on Thursday by members of a human rights organization in the desert 20 kilometres south of Karbala.

The grave could turn out to contain thousands of bodies, witnesses said, as it has not yet been fully excavated. The inhabitants of Karbala were convinced that the remains were those of civilians taken away by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard during the Shia rebellion in 1991.

Among the dead, whose hands had been tied with thick cables, were numerous women.

International human rights organizations said thousands of Shias were arrested and disappeared in the early 1990s.

SEARCH: Iraqis travel through the country with copies of ID and photos, visiting prisons and pleading with US soldiers, before finally turning up at the Red Cross.

Some just disappeared in the confusion of war or were taken prisoner by US soldiers. Others were picked up by the secret service during Saddam’s regime or were simply arrested on the street, absent for years without a trace.—dpa