Iraq Watch: December 27, 2005

Iraqis Protest Vote; Saddam-Era Mass Grave Found

BAGHDAD, Iraq - About 10,000 Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad on Tuesday protesting against the parliamentary election results and for a unified national government. The demonstrators chanted "No Sunnis, no Shiites, yes for national unity." Many held posters of former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who heads the Iraqi National List (INL), and the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front's (IAF) leader Adnan al-Dulaimi.

The mass grave - discovered by municipal workers in the southern city of Karbala - is believed to date back to the crushed Shiite uprising against Hussein in 1991. Many of Iraq's Shiites and Kurds rose up against Saddam following the nations defeat in the first Gulf War.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military announced the deaths of three U.S. service members. Two Task Force Baghdad pilots were killed in a non-hostile helicopter accident late Monday in western Baghdad while a U.S. soldier, assigned to the II MEF, died from wounds sustained in a small-arms fire attack yesterday near Khalidiyah.

In other violence, a clash between militants and Iraqi police in Baghdad left two police and two civilians dead. Another policeman died in a shooting in the southern part of the capital city. Separately, two Iraqi police officers were killed south of Baghdad in a roadside bombing.

In al-Mahawil, 40 miles south of Baghdad, four Shiite workers were executed after gunmen stormed their poultry farm. The bodies were found with a note attached saying that the victims "deserve[d] to die" because they were Shiites.