Red Cross facilitates exchange of soldiers' remains killed on both sides of Iran-Iraq War
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced on Wednesday that it had participated in the handover that day of over 30 Iraqi and Iranian soldiers killed during the deadly war between the two nations in the 1980s.
Under the auspices of the #ICRC, the remains of 11 Iraqi & 20 Iranian soldiers were repatriated to their respective homelands today at the southern Shalamcha border, #Basra.
— ICRC Iraq (@ICRC_IQ) October 6, 2021
We will continue to support relevant authorities in providing answers to families of the #missing.#Iraq pic.twitter.com/qdvBacfdvr
“Under the auspices of the ICRC, the remains of 11 Iraqi and 20 Iranian soldiers were repatriated to their respective homelands today at the southern Shalamcha border, in Basra,” the official Twitter account of the organization's Iraq office wrote in a post.
“We will continue to support relevant authorities in providing answers to families of the missing.”
The ICRC is supporting the efforts of both Iranian and Iraqi authorities by helping to repatriate human remains between the two countries, something it has done in other war-torn nations as well.
A memorandum of understanding aimed at clarifying the fate of persons missing in connection with the 1980-1988 war was signed in 2008 in Geneva by the governments of Iraq and Iran and the ICRC.
Since then, the remains of several Iraqi and Iranian soldiers have been repatriated.
More than 30 years after the war, many Iraqi and Iranian families still have no news about their relatives that were killed during the conflict, which killed hundreds of thousands of people.
The remains of soldiers killed in the #Iran-#Iraq war are still being repatriated, and many are still missing 33 years after the end of the war. A reminder of how long-lasting the consequences of wars can be. https://t.co/QbId06jcLC
— Donatella Rovera (@DRovera) October 6, 2021
Donatella Rovera, a Senior Crisis Adviser at Amnesty International who works on Iraq, posted, “The remains of soldiers killed in the Iran-Iraq war are still being repatriated, and many are still missing 33 years after the end of the war,”
She added that this is a reminder of how long-lasting the consequences of wars can be.