Until 1997 the Basra Memorial was located on the main quay of the naval dockyard at Maqil. Because of the sensitivity of the site, the Memorial was moved by presidential decree. It is now located 32 kilometres along the road to Nasiriyah, in the middle of what was a major battleground during the first Gulf War. The Basra Memorial commemorates more than 40,500 members of the Commonwealth forces who died in the operations in Mesopotamia from the Autumn of 1914 to the end of August 1921 and whose graves are not known. The memorial was designed by Edward Warren.