In its book "Iraq's Crime of Genocide", Human Rights Watch/Middle East writes: "Throughout Iraqi Kurdistan, although women and children vanished in certain clearly defined areas, adult males who were captured disappeared in mass. ... It is apparent that a principal purpose of Anfal was to exterminate all adult males of military service age captured in rural Iraqi Kurdistan." Only a handful survived the execution squads. Even amidst this most systematic slaughter of adult men and boys, however, "hundreds of women and young children perished, too," but "the causes of their deaths were different—gassing, starvation, exposure, and willful neglect—rather than bullets fired from a Kalashnikov." Nevertheless, on 1 September 2004, U.S. forces in Iraq discovered hundreds of bodies of Kurdish women and children at the site near Hatra, who are believed to have been executed in early 1988, or late 1987.