Defying fatwa, Iraqis flock to COVID cemetery to exhume dead, re-bury elsewhere

Iraqi men carry the corpse of a man who, according to his relatives, died of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), after they dug it up to be transferred to the "Valley of Peace" cemetery on the outskirts of the holy city of Najaf, Iraq September 13, 2020. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - It took Abu Haider and his relatives several hours to dig up his nephew's grave and exhume the body at a cemetery in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf built especially for COVID-19 victims.

When they had finished, they shrouded the body in white sheets, loaded it on to the back of a pickup truck and set off to re-inter it in Najaf's old "Valley of Peace" graveyard, the traditional resting place for Iraq's Shi'ites.