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1631-HQ-1462938 escape. At least one woman fled leaving her children behind. Those who remained were thrown into locked cells, and guarded by uniformed agents; some dressed all in the green and others in blue. Here, they were held for several days without food, blankets or medical attention. HAMOUD SA'ID AHMAD, an employee of the municipal morgue attached to Erbil’s Republic Hospital, was summoned on a number of occasions over the next few days to the Amn jail in the city’s Teirawa quarter and ordered to pick up bodies to be prepared for burial. Over a three day period, AHMAD counted 64 bodies. Arriving to collect them, AHMAD saw other prisoners wandering around the in the prison courtyard. Some had clear fluid oozing from their mouths; others had dark, burn-like marks on their bodies, especially the throat and hands. AHMAD saw men, women, and children in detention, including several nursing babies in their mother’s arms. The bodies, kept ina separate cell, bore the same marks. None showed any signs of gunshot wounds. Most of the dead appeared to be children and elderly people. An Amn official told AHMAD that “they are saboteurs, all saboteurs we attack with chemical weapons.” An ambulance driver told AHMAD that he recognized one of the dead as a Republic Hospital employee from Sheikh Wasan. Family members waiting outside the jail for news said that the detainees were being held as hostages to compel their peshmerga relatives to surrender. On the last of his three visits, AHMAD saw two large buses pull up outside the prison, their windows sealed with cloth. Later that day, a female prisoner managed to whisper to him “do you know what the buses were doing here? They took all the men away, to the south, like the Barzanis.” The men were never seen alive again. 16