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Corpses found a year after Iraqi athletes vanished

The skulls, bones and tattered clothing of a team of Iraqi martial arts experts have been found more than a year after they disappeared, presumed kidnapped, in an al-Qaeda stronghold west of Baghdad.

At least 13 bodies were found in a ditch out in the desert 97km west of Ramadi in Anbar Province, one of Iraq's most violent areas and where al-Qaeda and Sunni Arab insurgents are battling US and Iraqi forces. Plastic athletic sandals lay scattered on the ground near the bodies. All had been shot.

The remains were taken to Imam Ali Hospital in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite Sadr City neighborhood, home to most of the athletes, where they were DNA tested. The men were members of a private sports club that hopes to one day send members to the Olympics. Weeping relatives gathered on Saturday at the hospital to try to identify the bodies.

The bodies were very badly decomposed. Just the bones and clothes remained said Qasim al-Mudalal, the director of Imam Ali Hospital.

The 15 tae kwon do experts were abducted in May last year as they were traveling by bus through the Anbar desert on their way to a training camp in Jordan. Two of the athletes are unaccounted for although Mudalal suggested partial remains were also recovered.

The Iraqi government had tried to secure their release but no word had been heard of them until last week's grisly find.

"They were killed about the same time they were taken. They were killed and left in the desert," said Hameed al-Haies, head of a Sunni Arab group that has been fighting al-Qaeda in Anbar.

He said the men had not been wearing their team uniforms and family members had been able to identify most of them by the clothes they were wearing. An identity card was also found on one body belonging to 26-year-old squad member Haidar Jabbar.

Haies said members of the Anbar Salvation Council, a group of local Sunnis who have been fighting al-Qaeda in the province, found the bodies after an al-Qaeda captive told them where the athletes had been killed.

Iraqi athletes were rarely able to travel abroad during the rule of late president Saddam Hussein because of UN sanctions. Athletes forward to international competitions and more funding after Saddam was toppled in 2003 but many have been kidnapped and killed in Iraq's endless fighting between majority Shia and Sunni Arabs.

Ali Kanoun, said his cousin, Rasoul Salah, one of the victims, was never involved in politics.

"His dream was to represent his country in sports, but instead he was killed," Kanoun said.

Athletes and sports officials have increasingly become targets of threats, kidnappings and assassination attempts in Iraq, either as part of sectarian violence or for ransom. Victims include the Sunni head of one of Iraq's leading football clubs, an Iraqi international football referee and a top football player on the Iraqi Olympic team. Gunmen also kidnapped the chairman of Iraq's National Olympic Committee and at least 30 other officials last year.
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