25 die in Mosul gangland killings
At least 25 people have been murdered in gangland-style killings in Iraq’s third-largest city this week.
Residents have been gunned down in a spate of attacks throughout Mosul, Iraqi police said.
Elsewhere, five US troops were killed in operations south and west of Baghdad, the US military said.
Police also stormed a farm and freed 17 victims of a factory kidnapping.
Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, has a mixed Kurdish and Sunni Arab population and a tradition of sectarianism.
The Kurds, who are largely Sunni Muslim but not Arab, have formed a prosperous autonomous region nearby after decades of oppression and mass killings under the Sunni Arab minority that ran Iraq until Saddam Hussein was ousted three years ago.
Police said they were not sure if the attacks were carried out by the Sunni Arab-led insurgency, common criminals or sectarian death squads.
Increasing numbers of Iraqi deaths over the past months have been attributed to revenge killings carried out by Shiite-backed militia organisations or Sunni Arabs who have banded together in retribution.
The outburst of killings was first reported on Tuesday when police found the bodies of a husband and wife – both Kurds – shot dead in eastern Mosul. Before the day was out, 10 people were either killed in shootings or found dead.
The killings persisted on Wednesday with eight people – including a child and a college student – shot dead by the evening.
The violence continued yesterday with a policeman killed in a shoot-out with gunmen early in the day and six civilians shot dead before the evening
The police raid north of Baghdad that freed the 17 captives came a day after the mass kidnapping, believed to have been organised by Sunni extremists at the close of a factory shift.
Initial reports said as many as 85 people, including women who had taken their children to work, were initially taken.
But Industry Minister Fowzi Hariri told state-run Iraqiya TV yesterday that 64 people were abducted, two of whom were killed trying to escape. Thirty people, mainly women and children, were freed shortly after the kidnapping, leaving 15 still believed to be in captivity.
A National Security Ministry official said that several insurgents holding the kidnap victims were captured during the raid.
Police raided the farm on a tip from a kidnap victim who said he was freed after showing his captors a fake ID with a Sunni tribal family name.
The military said the four Marines were killed on Tuesday in Anbar province, three of them in a roadside bombing and a fourth in a separate operation. A soldier died on Wednesday south of the capital, the military said, giving no further details.
At least 2,512 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003. The figure includes seven military civilians.
In other parts of the country yesterday, police reported 13 other deaths tied to insurgent or death squad attacks, including six bodies that floated to the surface of the Tigris River in Kut, a city 100 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Nine days into the security crackdown on Baghdad that includes hundreds of checkpoints and an expanded curfew, the capital was relatively quiet. Police reported only two deaths related to insurgent or sectarian attacks.
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