British War Graves In Iraq Restored After Decades-Long Wait

Graves of British military casualties buried in the Iraqi desert have been renovated after decades of conflict prevented their upkeep. 

Habbaniya War Cemetery, around 60 miles west of Baghdad, honours 173 Second World War casualties and 117 who died in later conflicts.

Much of the site has been damaged over the years but has been considered too dangerous for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) to maintain the site since the early 1990s. 

War and political instability had rendered the area too dangerous to visit, but the cemetery is now within an Iraqi airbase - generally improved security in Iraq also enabling new headstones to be put in place.

Stonemasons at the CWGC's operations base in Beaurains, France, began producing nearly 300 white Portland stone headstones in December last year to replace those crumbling with age.

Around 51,000 Commonwealth casualties in Iraq during the First World War and 3,000 from the Second World War are to be commemorated by the CWGC, which is tasked with maintaining 23,000 similar sites worldwide.

Memorial sites and cemeteries from the battlefields of France and Flanders in Belgium are among those to be preserved.

Victoria Wallace, Director General of the CWGC, said: "Our teams reach some very remote locations in their care for war graves, and it is an endless task of which we are hugely proud - and that we will never give up."