US investigators at the most recently discovered mass grave in Iraq have exhumed 113 bodies so far—almost all of them women and children: 113 Kurds Are Found In Mass Grave. (Hat tip: jrdroll.)

BAGHDAD, April 29 — U.S. investigators have exhumed the remains of 113 people — all but five of them women, children or teenagers — from a mass grave in southern Iraq that may hold at least 1,500 victims of Saddam Hussein’s campaign against the Kurdish minority in the 1980s, U.S. and Iraqi officials said this week.

The recovered bodies are expected to be among the evidence used against the deposed Iraqi president by prosecutors at a special tribunal, investigators said.

The non-acidic soil at the grave site preserved layers and layers of distinctive Kurdish clothing worn by many of the victims, suggesting that they may have piled on their best clothes expecting to be relocated, investigators said.

Authorities showed reporters some of the remains, including the skull of an older woman with pink dentures and the skeleton of a teenage girl clutching a bag of possessions.

“These were not combatants,” said Gregg Nivala, a member of a U.S. team investigating crimes committed by Hussein’s government and assisting the tribunal. “These were women and children.”