http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/world/12101410.htmBAGHDAD, Iraq - Salwa Jabr Saihoud wanted to grant her father's dying wish that she accompany his body on its journey to burial in Najaf. It mattered little to her that the road to the Shiite holy city is one of the most dangerous in Iraq.
The journey ended in horror.
Two of her brothers, three other close relatives and a family friend were kidnapped en route to Najaf. Their bodies were later found with gunshot wounds. Her father's body, in a rickety wooden coffin, was tossed into a river. It was all the work of Sunni Arab insurgents.
"We are Shiites. We must bury our dead in Najaf no matter what," Salwa Saihoud, 40, said at the family home in Sadr City, an eastern Baghdad district where some 2.5 million Shiites live. "I am the oldest of his daughters, and it was my father's wish that I go. He knew he was dying."
Such horrifying killings are becoming commonplace in Iraq, an ethnically and religiously diverse nation torn by crime and a two-year insurgency that followed the U.S.-led war to oust Saddam Hussein. Hundreds of men, mostly Shiites, have turned up headless or riddled with bullets.
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