Twenty-three bodies found in Baghdad
At least 23 bodies – many of them hanged – were found dumped in parts of Baghdad today, Iraqi police said.
A US military patrol found 18 bodies in an abandoned minibus in western Baghdad.
The victims – all men – had been handcuffed, blindfolded and hanged or shot, police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said. At least two appeared to be foreign Arabs, he added.
The bus containing the bodies was found on the road between Amariyah and Khadra, two mostly Sunni Muslim neighbourhoods in one of Baghdad’s most dangerous sections, Abdul-Razzaq said.
There was no immediate comment from the US military.
The bodies were taken to Yarmouk Hospital, where Dr. Mohanad Jawad confirmed two of the victims had been shot and the rest hanged. Their deaths appeared recent, he added.
Police found the bodies of four more men in an open field in Baladiyat, a mixed Sunni-Shiite neighbourhood in east Baghdad.
The victims had been handcuffed and hanged, police Capt. Mahir Hamad Moussa said, noting the rope marks on their necks.
Another a body, shot in the head, was found near a shop in the eastern Kamaliyah suburb, which has also suffered repeated attacks.
The grisly finds follow a surge of sectarian violence unleashed by the February 22 bombing of a famed Shiite shrine in the central city of Samarra and reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques and clerics.
While sectarian killing has diminished in recent days, other attacks have increased, the Defence Ministry reported.
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