'Dozens of bodies found at mass grave in Jaffa'

An official at a Muslim cemetery in Jaffa said Friday that the remains of dozens of Palestinians killed in the 1948 War of Independence were discovered in a mass grave on Wednesday, AFP reported.

The discovery of six chambers full of skeletons was made during renovations at the cemetery, according to the report.

AFP quoted Jaffa fisherman Atar Zeinab, 80, as saying he had helped collect the bodies of those killed in fighting south of Jaffa during the 1948 war and bring them to the cemetery for hasty burial without ceremony.

“I carried to the cemetery 60 bodies during a period of three or four months,” AFP, quoted Zeinab as saying. “We used to find the people in the street and most of the time we didn’t know who they were.”

Zeinab added that because of the danger of ongoing fighting, the bodies were piled on top of each other in already existing burial plots in the cemetery, rather than in accordance with Muslim custom.

“We carried them early in the morning or in the night,” he added. “We put women, children and men in the same place... nobody prayed for these people.”

Arabs make up around a third of the 46,000 residents of Jaffa, where they were a majority before the 1948 War of Independence.

Saturday 1 June 2013

http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Dozens-of-bodies-found-at-mass-grave-in-Jaffa-315073