Mideastern burial traditions clash with fears of contagion
(WorldNews Iran)

BAGHDAD (AP) - Mohammed al-Dulfi’s 67-year-old father died on March 21 after a brief struggle against the new coronavirus, but it would take nine days for his body to find a final resting place in the Shiite holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq. On two occasions, the family rejected remote burial plots proposed by the government outside Baghdad for him and seven other coronavirus victims, al-Dulfi said. A fight broke out between the families and the Health Ministry’s team. His father´s corpse waited in a hospital morgue for days. `We were suffering immensely, knowing my father was deceased but we could not bury him,` said the 26-year-old. Across the Middle East and parts of South...