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NAJAF, Iraq: Mohammad al-Bahadli dug the warm sand of the Iraqi desert with his bare hands to succeed in his father’s corpse.
“Now he can nevertheless be with our people, our family, in the old cemetery,” Bahadli, 49, said as his relatives sobbed over his body, wrapped in a shroud.
After restrictions on the burial of those who have died from the new coronavirus have come true, Iraqis are exhumanizing the sick to bury them in place in a circle of family cemeteries.
For months, families who died after contracting COVID-19 were barred from carrying the frame to bury him in the circle of relatives’ graves, so that the bodies have not yet spread the virus.
Instead, the government established a “coronavirus cemetery” on a desert outdoor plot of the sanctuary city of Najaf, where volunteers in protective clothing buried the sick buryed the sick five metres away.
Only one member of the family circle was able to attend the quick funerals, which happened in the middle of the night.
There they were buried victims of all sects, Shiite and Sunni Muslims, as well as Christians.
But on September 7, the Iraqi government announced that it would allow those who died after contracting COVID-19 to be transferred to the cemetery of their family choice circle.
Many of those buried under emergency regulations came here from other parts of the country.
“The first time he buried so far,” Bahadli said of his 80-year-old father’s funeral rites.
“I’m not sure it’s been done the right and right way. “
SERIOUS MIX
Iraq has been one of the countries hardest hit in the Middle East by COVID-19, with more than 280,000 infections and nearly 8,000 deaths.
On September 4, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that “the likelihood of transmission by manipulation of human remains is low”.
A few days later, under pressure from families, the Iraqi government announced that it would allow the bodies to be moved through “specialized fitness equipment. “
But the first burials turned out to be chaotic.
In the “coronavirus cemetery” in najaf’s open-air desert, many families began arriving late on Thursday to dig up their circle of relatives and take the bodies home.
They brought their own shovels, sand-collecting baskets and new wooden coffins to bring the dead.
The sounds of fierce cries and bereavement prayers mixed with the snap of beaks echoed in the sand.
There were no fitness professionals or cemetery guides on site so families could locate or search for bodies correctly, an AFP correspondent said.
In some cases, families dug into a grave marked after a relative, to locate an empty coffin, or to notice a young man’s body as they waited to locate his elderly mother’s body.
Other bodies were wrapped in funeral shrouds, demanded by Islam as a sign of respect.
The findings provoked outrage at the state-sponsored armed organization that had taken over funerals in recent months, and some relatives set fire to the base of the nearby faction.
“Nice stay”
“The gravediggers do not even have the right materials,” said Abdallah Kareem, whose brother Ahmed died as a result of COVID-19.
“They don’t even know how to locate the graves,” he told the AFP while tending the grave.
Kareem, who is 230 kilometres south of Iraq’s Muthanna province, decided to refute his brother in case he violated devout decrees.
In Islam, the deceased will have to be buried as soon as possible, regularly within 24 hours.
Cremation is strictly prohibited and new burials are virtually unknown, but they are necessarily prohibited if the frame remains intact, a Najaf cleric told the AFP.
Despite the complications, families were relieved to see the closure through a classic burial.
“Since my father was buried here, I’ve been repeating his words in my head before his death: ‘My son, look to bury me in the circle of relatives of the cemetery, don’t let him take me too far away from my enjoyments,’ Hussein, another mourner who only gave his first name, told the AFP.
The 53-year-old man dug up his father’s body in his hand and transferred him to Wadi al-Salam Cemetery, where millions of Shiite Muslims are buried.
“The dream that haunted me for a few months has come true,” Hussein said.