Trump Administration Aims to Block New Funding for Coronavirus Testing and Tracing

Ground was broken on this cemetery in southern Iraq four months ago, and already there are more than 3,200 graves. The backhoes work every night to make new furrows in the sandy soil.

The story of how the cemetery came into existence starts when the first coronavirus patients began to die in March in Baghdad. The religious and health authorities were unprepared for the sense of stigma that having the disease carried, as well as the fear that touching the body would risk contagion. People whose relatives had not died of the virus felt it was a stigma to be buried next to someone who had.

“I began to see these scenes on TV — I still remember them — there were seven or eight bodies thrown outside a hospital morgue and they left them there,” recalled Sheikh Tahir Al-Khaqani, who is head of the Imam Ali Combat Division, one of the first militias created to fight the Islamic State. Unlike some of the militias that are close to Iran, the Imam Ali brigade is linked to the moderate, inclusive senior Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

The idea came to Mr. Al-Khaqani that the solution was a new graveyard just for those who died of the coronavirus. He conferred with the governor of Najaf, with Mr. Sistani and with the leader of the Shia Endowment, which is in charge of all Shiite financial and real estate matters.

Within days, they had a 1,500-acre patch of ground 20 miles from the city of Najaf, allocated for the burials.

The Imam Ali combat division volunteered to run the cemetery. Its medical teams took on the job of receiving the dead, disinfecting the body bags in which they arrived and then washing the deceased.

Other contingents took responsibility for the digging and burials. Some took on the role of guides to help family members when they come to find their relative’s grave among the thousands stretching out across the desert. Family visits are permitted 10 days after burial.