By Wissam Mohammed

BAGHDAD, June 16 (Reuters) - The decomposed bodies of at least 13 martial arts experts have been found more than a year after they were kidnapped in an al Qaeda stronghold west of Baghdad, local officials and family members said on Saturday.

The bodies were found on Thursday in a ditch in the desert about 100 km (60 miles) west of Ramadi in Anbar province, one of Iraq's most violent areas and where al Qaeda and Sunni Arab insurgents are battling U.S. and Iraqi forces.

All appeared to have been shot, hospital officials said. Weeping relatives gathered at the hospital in the Baghdad Shi'ite slum of Sadr city to identify the bodies.

"The bodies were very badly decomposed. Just the bones and clothes remained," Qasim al-Mudalal, the director of Baghdad's Imam Ali Hospital, told Reuters.

Fifteen tae kwondo experts were kidnapped in May 2006 as they were travelling by bus through the Anbar desert on their way to Jordan to attend a training course.

Mudalal said partial remains which may be those of the remaining two squad members were also recovered.

The Iraqi government had tried to secure their release but no word had been heard of them until Thursday's grisly find.

"They were killed about the same time they were taken. They were killed and left in the desert," said Hameed al-Hai'es, head of a Sunni Arab group that has been fighting al Qaeda in Anbar.

He said family members had been able to identify them by the clothes they were wearing. An identity card was also found on one body belonging to 26-year-old squad member Haidar Jabbar.

The bodies were not wearing team uniforms, Mudalal said.

Hai'es said members of the Anbar Salvation Council, a group of local Sunnis who have been fighting al Qaeda in the province, found the bodies after an al Qaeda captive told them where the tae kwondo team members had been killed.

Funeral processions for the squad were being held in Sadr City on Saturday. The families said they had received to permission to bury them in the southern holy Shi'ite city of Najaf despite a four-day curfew.

Iraqi athletes were rarely able to travel abroad during Saddam Hussein's rule because of United Nations sanctions.

Athletes looked forward to international competitions and more funding after Saddam was toppled in 2003 but many have since been kidnapped and killed in Iraq's relentless sectarian fighting between majority Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs.

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