Iraq's Tigris River Yields Hundreds of Corpses

HISHAM K. ALWAN and SALAM T. JIHAD

A system of iron weirs in the Tigris River 20 miles southeast of Baghdad was designed to prevent lily pads, known here as "Nile flower," from traveling down-river and clogging canals vital to farmers for irrigating Iraq's south. But now, the weirs also catch corpses that float down from the capital, murder victims in the sectarian violence that blights Iraq. Local police in the nearby town of Swaira say that since January 2005 they have collected 339 bodies of men, women and children from the filters. It's considered one of the highest numbers of corpses found in a single location in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003...

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