Funeral processions were held across from 45 Iranian cities on Wednesday for 225 unknown soldiers, killed during the 1980-1988 Iraqi-Iranian war, whose remains have been retrieved from Baghdad recently.
According to the Iranian official news agency (IRNA), six were buried at the Imam Sadeq University in Tehran. The processions featured mourners carrying the coffins, draped Iranian flags, on their shoulders through the streets before taking them for burial.
The head of the Iranian committee on those missing in action, Brigadier Mir-Feisal Baqerzadeh was quoted as saying Saturday that so far the bodies of 48,000 Iranian soldiers have been located and operations are underway to find the bodies of 10,000 more.
Baqerzadeh said that Iraqi officials had agreed to return the bodies of 600 Iranian soldiers who died in Iraqi jails as prisoners of war. The issue of prisoners of war and those missing in action (MiAs) has been one of the major stumbling block to the normalization of ties between Tehran and Baghdad since they ended the war with a ceasefire. So far, the two neighbors have not signed a peace treaty although cooperation in some fields has been underway for years now.
Since 1980s, the two countries have exchanged more than 100,000 prisoners of war from both sides, according to the agency. Press Tuesday said that an Iranian delegation had headed for Baghdad on Monday to negotiate the fate of the remaining prisoners of war. (Albawaba.com)
