In a dusty hospital graveyard ... a father's desperate search for his son

He knelt by the graveside with lines of anxiety etched on his forehead while a hospital orderly in a blue coat dug at the earth with his bare hands. Two other men joined in, moving the soil away in gentle scoops.

Dark blue trousers emerged, first one leg, then the other. A small hand, its fist slightly clenched, was slowly uncovered. The dead boy's face was hidden by a red cloth. The orderlies hesitated for an instant as if they needed extra strength before they started to remove it.

By now Aboudi Kazem was lying above the grave on one elbow, drawing fiercely at a cigarette. Was this going to be his moment of truth? Were they about to find the missing body of his son Ali, the 16-year-old he had not seen for seven months since he left home in Najaf to come to stay with his uncle in Baghdad?

As the cloth was unwound, the father's face tensed and then suddenly relaxed. The teenage boy whose eyelids the orderlies were carefully clearing of dust was not Ali.

Aboudi Kazem knew his son was dead, victim of a trigger-happy American marine at a Baghdad checkpoint.

He even knew Ali must be in this hospital since this is where he was brought before he died. But Aboudi Kazem desperately needed to find Ali to say goodbye and give him a decent burial. Yet when discovery was imminent Aboudi Kazem flinched at the horror of seeing his boy's face emerge from the grave.

He dragged himself to his feet and lit another cigarette while orderlies tossed earth back on to the "wrong" boy. They moved towards another grave to dig again. The only clue was a label stuck in the ground - "grey T-shirt, blue trousers, no name, April 11".

"The pain is in my heart", said Aboudi Kazem before breaking into tears and walking on to the next exhumation.

Ten feet away a crowd watched the sad scene through the hospital's white fence. An orderly with a Kalashnikov sent them away. Inside the hospital grounds the mood was angry. "The Americans can stay here one week, and no more. If they stay longer, we will screw them. They only want our oil," said one man.

This was the Central Teaching Hospital for Children, but the roughly 50 new graves laid out in its side garden contain more adults than children. A few new corpses were coming in, killed in shoot-outs as neighbourhoods defend themselves from looters, but the vast majority of the dead were victims of American fire.

"We are the only hospital in Baghdad which receives the wounded and the dead. We are the only working hospital left," Ahmed Mohammed, its assistant director, explained.

Every day families arrive searching for their dead. Ali Kazem's case is one of many. His uncle Mohammed was with the boy when he died. He has no doubt his nephew's death was unnecessary.

"We had a white flag on the car to show the Americans we came in peace," he said. "We got out at the checkpoint and put up our hands. Ali died with his arms raised. A bullet hit him in the side just below his left shoulder."

Mohammed took us to his home in the middle-class suburb of Mansour. Dressed in black robes, Ali's grandmother fished out a family picture with Ali in it. She pointed to a pink plastic bag containing his clothes. Nothing else was left of him, except memories and love.

"Why? Oh why?", Wasila Mahdi Bendar, 57, asked. Ali had come to Baghdad to look for work, she said. He loved football and spent hours practising on the front lawn.

During the American bombing the family rarely left the compound of their home. When the bombing was over, they thought it was safe. Ali had gone out with his uncle to have a look around.