⁍ After the outbreak of the coronavirus in Iraq, some tribes and religious authorities in different parts of the country refused to bury victims of the coronavirus in local cemeteries.
⁍ This was the main reason behind the creation of a special cemetery for COVID-19 victims.
⁍ So far, over 4,000 COVID-19 victims from across the country and belonging to different religious sects have been buried in Najaf’s new cemetery.
– The Iraqi city of Najaf built a special cemetery to house the bodies of people who died from the H7N9 virus, but some religious leaders opposed the move, Reuters reports. “We must not dig up Muslim graves,” said a representative of Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric. “This is clear among religious leaders, in their positions, and in their books.” But dozens of families are defying the order, burying their dead in an old cemetery instead. “We didn’t see our dead, the coronavirus victims, we were not allowed to be with them, they were buried quite randomly,” said one man who spent hours digging up his nephew’s grave and exhuming the body. So far, more than 4,000 victims have been buried in the new cemetery.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-iraq-exhumation/defying-fatwa-iraqis-flock-to-covid-cemetery-to-exhume-dead-re-bury-elsewhere-idUSKBN2662J6