BAGHDAD - Sabah Nuri and Jassem Mohammed Ghirri were both killed on the same day in Baghdad.
Nuri, a simple Iraqi civilian, died Saturday in a roadside bomb explosion, while Ghirri, a senior official in Iraq's foreign ministry, was shot dead by unknown assailants.
They didn't know each other, but their bodies ended up in the same morgue at the Al-Yarmuk hospital in the war-torn capital.
And on Sunday, the day of their funerals, their bodies accidentally got switched.
"The morgue was full of bodies. The family of Jassem came first to collect their son's body," said Mohammed Ali, director of the hospital morgue.
"The body was put in a wooden coffin and was taken by the family for burial," he added.
"Minutes later Nuri's family arrived to collect his body. One of his relatives decided to have a last look. He shifted the blanket covering his face and to his surprise it was not Sabah," he added.
"This is not our father," a woman screamed.
"Is this a curse? Even in death things go wrong," a woman shouted.
"We need to find his body before it is buried by other people," she added.
A group of men rushed off to Ghirri's house to bring the body back.
"It was terrible. Jassem's daughters were weeping over Sabah's body," said Hussein, one of the men who went to retrieve the body.
"The family didn't know what to do and the funeral procession turned into chaos," he added.
The morgue director said "this is the first time that has happened. Since the start of the bombing and killing we have receive lots of bodies and I supposed mistakes will happen."
US officials admitted earlier in the month they too had wrongly identified and returned to the wrong countries the remains of a US citizen and of a Fijian killed in a rebel attack on a helicopter in Iraq.
The remains of the unidentified US security guard went to Fiji while the body of Fijian security guard Waisea Atalifo was sent to the United States.
US officials extended their condolences to the bereaved families over the mix-up, saying they understood the mistake "caused immense anguish for both families".
Atalifo, 51, a former Fijian soldier working as a security guard in Iraq, was killed with another Fijian man, six Americans and three Bulgarians in a missile attack by insurgents on their commercial helicopter north of Baghdad on April 21.
According to the website IraqBodyCount.com, at least 21,700 Iraqi civilians have died since US-led forces invaded the country in March 2003 to topple president Saddam Hussein.
Since major hostilities were declared at an end in May of the same year, an insurgency, while primarily targeting both foreign and Iraqi military forces and police, has indiscriminately also killed civilians in car bombings, suicide attacks, roadside bombs and shootings.
Common criminals have also had a big hand in the deaths of civilians.
The Iraqi government said Sunday that more than 400 people had been killed in some 70 car bombs since the beginning of May, when the government of Ibrahim Jaafari took office, the first democratically elected regime in 50 years.
05/18/2005 12:14 GMT