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Iran, Iraq to Resume Searching for Missing Soldiers
Iran and Iraq have reached a new agreement to resume search operations for soldiers missing in the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, the Iranian committee in charge of the search for missing in action (MIA) said on Tuesday.
The agreement was reached during a meeting between Iranian and Iraqi delegations Monday, Iran's official IRNA news agency reported.
According to the agreement, Iran will start searching operations on September 22 in parts of the Iraqi territory.
IRNA said several Iranian searching groups are currently combing the Iraqi part of Shalamcheh and neighboring regions where most bloody battles were fought during the war between 1980 and 1988, which killed some one million people.
The two countries have so far recovered scores of bodies of soldiers from both sides and have exchanged over 100,000 prisoners of war (POWs) since the end of the war.
The issue of POWs and MIAs has been a major obstacle to the normalization of Tehran-Baghdad ties.
Iran says some 2,500 of its forces are still being held in Iraqi prisons while refuting Baghdad's claims that it holds nearly 30,000 Iraqi soldiers.
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