BAGHDAD — Declining violence has prompted Iraqi refugees to pack up and return home, with the government on Wednesday claiming 46,030 people crossed back over the borders in October alone.
But the remnants of the brutality that has shaken Iraq keep turning up. The Iraqi Army said 17 bodies were found in an area troops have only recently been able to enter after driving al-Qaida fighters out of regions north and west of the capital.
The mass grave was found amid brush near a school in Hashimiyat, west of Baqouba, said Col. Ihsan al-Shimari. Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, is the capital of Diyala province, where al-Qaida in Iraq is believed to have a strong presence.
Many of the bodies were handcuffed and blindfolded, al-Shimari said. They likely were passengers kidnapped at fake checkpoints on a nearby road leading to Baqouba, a dangerous route dubbed the “road of death.”
The discovery came a day after the U.S. military announced that another mass grave had been found in Iraq’s western Anbar province. Iraqi soldiers found 22 bodies in the Lake Tharthar area on Saturday during a joint operation with U.S. forces.
Al-Shimari said he believed more graves would be uncovered soon, because U.S. and Iraqi security forces were for the first time searching some areas that were previously too violent to enter.
Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, the Iraqi spokesman for a U.S.-Iraqi military push to pacify Baghdad, said border authorities recorded 46,030 people returning to Iraq in October and attributed the large number to the “improving security situation.”
“The level of terrorist operations has dropped in most of the capital’s neighborhoods, due to the good performance of the armed forces,” al-Moussawi said. Al-Moussawi did not give numbers of Iraqis returning home before October.
Last month’s numbers coincide with Syria and Jordan tightening their borders to Iraqis fleeing their homeland.
Syria is home to at least 1.2 million Iraqi refugees, and Jordan has about 750,000. Many of those Iraqis are living in limbo, unable to work and running out of any money they were able to bring out of Iraq.
Syria began demanding visas for Iraqis last month and Jordan has increasingly turned back Iraqis.
Those who fled to the two neighboring countries before the new restrictions were put in place are now forced to leave when residency permits expire, unless they have been officially recognized by the United Nations as refugees — a process that can take months.
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