Mass grave found north of Baghdad

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi security forces found a massgrave containing about 50 bodies, some badly decomposed andothers killed more recently, during a hunt on Tuesday for alQaeda militants north of Baghdad, police said.

Police and members of a neighbourhood security unit raideda house thought to be used by Sunni Islamist al Qaeda in anarea near Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, whenthey found 10 people who had been kidnapped from a nearby town.

Police said information from some of the people freed fromthat house led to the discovery of the grave nearby.

Local families had identified some of those buried in thegrave but little other information was available, police said.Three car bombs were also found in the area.

The discovery of the mass grave came after Iraq's temporarynew national flag was raised over the country's parliament forthe first time in a ceremony trumpeted by the government as abreak with the bloody past and a step towards reconciliation.

In another symbolic move, the government said it hadstarted to rebuild a revered Shi'ite shrine in Samarra whichwas bombed two years ago, sparking sectarian violence whichkilled tens of thousands and took Iraq to the brink of civilwar.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki presided over theflag-raising outside his offices in Baghdad's heavily fortifiedGreen Zone after parliament last month agreed to adopt the newflag.

Iraq's Kurdish minority has long demanded a new flag,saying the old banner was a reminder of Saddam Hussein'sbrutality.

"It erases the impact of the past," Maliki said. The flagwill fly for a year before a permanent replacement is chosen.

Kurdish officials had refused to fly the old flag,introduced after the coup by Saddam's Baath party in 1963, andit was banned in largely autonomous northern Kurdistan.

Officials in Falluja in western Anbar province, once aSunni Arab insurgent stronghold, have also said they would notfly it.

But many ordinary Iraqis saw the old flag as having littleto do with Saddam, a Sunni Arab, and would prefer thegovernment focused on issues such as improving basic serviceslike electricity and water, which still run onlyintermittently.

"Our so-called leaders have been doing nothing for us sofar and now they want to erase our symbolic flag and make a newone," said one woman in southern Baghdad's Doura neighbourhood.

HEAL WOUNDS

In another move to heal wounds, Maliki said Samarra and itsal-Askari mosque which was badly damaged in a bombing bysuspected al Qaeda militants in February 2006 would be rebuilt.

That bombing toppled the mosque's famed golden dome andunleashed savage sectarian fighting between majority Shi'itesand minority Sunni Muslims.

Samarra is in Salahuddin, one of Iraq's northern provinceswhere al Qaeda fighters have regrouped after being forced outof former strongholds in Anbar and around Baghdad duringsecurity crackdowns last year.

Attacks across Iraq have fallen 60 percent since last June,with the growth of the mainly Sunni Arab neighbourhood policeunits and 30,000 extra U.S. troops credited for sharply fallingviolence.

But U.S. and Iraqi commanders warn that al Qaeda remains adangerous enemy and have launched a series of offensives innorthern provinces this year.

The U.S. military said a civilian woman had been killed onTuesday during a raid by its troops against al Qaeda suspects,the day after it admitted accidentally killing nine civilians.

The woman was killed when soldiers returned fire afterbeing shot at as they entered a house in a town near Tikrit,175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad. Two men, suspectedmilitants, were also killed and a young girl received legwounds.

The killing of Iraqi civilians by U.S. soldiers has longput a strain on relations between Baghdad and Washington. TheU.S. military says militants often deliberately use civiliansas shields against attacking U.S. forces.

But critics say U.S. forces often fire on militants withouttaking reasonable care to find out who else is in the area.

Six suspected al Qaeda fighters were killed in other raidsnear Khalis, another town north of Baghdad, the military said.

(Additional reporting by Aws Qusay and Waleed Ibrahim inBaghdad; Writing by Paul Tait; Editing by Jon Boyle)