Iran, Iraq swap 93 bodies from 1980s war

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq have exchanged the remains of 93 soldiers killed during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

The bodies of three Iranian martyrs and 90 Iraqis were swapped at the border crossing point of Shalamcha in southern Iraq on Sunday, IRNA reported.

The bodies were unidentified except for one coffin, which contained the remains of an Iraqi soldier. The coffins were draped in the flag of each soldier's country.

Mahdi al-Tamimi, the director of the human rights office of the Iraqi city of Basra, said, “We have not been able to determine the correct number of missing Iraqis. Iraq has received the remains of 2,229 Iraqi soldiers since 1996, and has handed over the remains of 1,473 Iranian soldiers to its neighbor."

"The Iraq-Iran border is long. This is why searching for bodies needs a lot of effort and time,” he added.

The imposed war began in 1980, a year after the victory of Iran's Islamic Revolution, when Iraq, supported by the major powers, invaded Iran with aerial and ground incursions into Iranian territory.

The war came to an end in August 1988, when Iran, in compliance with international law, accepted Resolution 598 of the UN Security Council.

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