Iraqi security forces found a mass grave containing about 50 bodies, some badly decomposed and others killed more recently, during a hunt for al-Qaeda militants north of Baghdad yesterday, police said.
Police and members of a neighborhood security unit raided a house thought to be used by Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda in an area near Samarra, 100 kilometres north of Baghdad, when they found 10 people who had been kidnapped from a nearby town.
Police said information from some of the people freed from that house led to the discovery of the grave nearby.
Local families had identified some of those buried in the grave but little other information was available, police said. Three car bombs were also found in the area.
The discovery of the mass grave came after Iraq's temporary new national flag was raised over the country's parliament for the first time in a ceremony trumpeted by the government as a break with the bloody past and a step towards reconciliation.
In another symbolic move, the government said it had started to rebuild a revered Shia shrine in Samarra which was bombed two years ago, sparking sectarian violence which killed tens of thousands and took Iraq to the brink of civil war.