Fifty-seven bodies of men, women and children have been recovered from the Tigris river in Iraq, near Suwayrah, about 40km south of Baghdad, police said on Wednesday.
”The decomposing bodies were recovered from the banks of the river between Al-Wahda and Al-Hafriya,” a police lieutenant colonel based in Suwayrah said. It was not immediately known how they had died.
”The bodies were buried in a cemetery some 3km west of Suwayrah after police took pictures of the victims,” he added.
The area where the bodies were found is about 32km downriver from Madain, where unconfirmed reports last weekend said Shi’ite hostages were taken by rebel Sunnis. Iraqi officials later denied there had been any hostage-taking.
Later on Wednesday, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told reporters the bodies were those of hostages missing in the area.
Bloody attacks continue
Meanwhile, more than 25 Iraqis and a Turkish truck driver were killed on Wednesday in a string of bloody attacks around Iraq, as politicians said they were putting final touches on the make-up of a new government.
Insurgents executed 19 Iraqi soldiers in Haditha, 260km north-west of the Iraqi capital, an interior ministry official said.
”These soldiers belonged to a group of 20 men who were travelling by bus to their base in Haditha when they were intercepted” by insurgents, the official said.
”They were taken to the stadium, where they were executed,” he said. ”Only one soldier survived and he has been taken to the town’s hospital.”
In Baghdad, three car bombs exploded in as many hours, following two similar deadly strikes on Tuesday, as insurgents stepped up attacks in the capital after a relative lull following the January 30 election.
Meanwhile, Minister of Foreign Affairs Hoshyar Zebari said a new government will soon be announced.
”We’re just about there with the setting up of a government,” he said, about 11 weeks after general elections that brought to power the Shi’ite-based United Iraqi Alliance and his own Kurdish alliance.
”I expect the government to be set up very soon,” he added.
The ongoing negotiations have tested the patience of ordinary Iraqis, warned Muwaffaq Rubaie, interim National Security Adviser.
Car bombs
Hospital sources said two people were killed, including a child, and at least five wounded in a first car bomb attack on Wednesday, in the western district of Amiriyah, that appeared to target a United States patrol.
The US military said it had no word of casualties among its ranks.
A second car bomb wounded eight near the Bilat police station in the southern district of Dora. Three more civilians were wounded in a third attack.
In other violence, a driver working for the health ministry was gunned down in his car while on his way to work in east Baghdad.
Another person with him was injured, according to an interior ministry official.
A Turk driving supplies for US forces was killed at dawn when his truck struck a mine near Shorjat, about 300km north of Baghdad, Iraqi security officials said.
He was the ninth foreign truck driver, most of them Turkish, killed this year in northern Iraq.
Two Iraqi soldiers were also killed early on Wednesday in clashes near Dujail, 30km north of the capital, according to Major Assad Sadad, who said three insurgents were captured.
An Iraqi soldier was killed and another wounded when their position came under mortar fire at dawn near Duluiyah, about 70km north of the capital.
And gunmen overnight assassinated Abdul Aal al-Battat, a Basra tribal leader, on his farm in Zubair, near Basra, 550km south of Baghdad, said police Lieutenant Haider Abdul Mahdi.
On Tuesday evening, two US soldiers were killed in a suicide car-bomb attack in Baghdad, the US military said on Wednesday. Four other US soldiers were wounded in the attack, along with an interpreter, the military said.
The fatalities bring to 1 553 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion more than two years ago.
Insurgents appear to be diversifying their strategy, mounting large-scale raids against police stations, such as one in the northern city of Mosul on Monday when a 50-strong group unsuccessfully tried to overrun local police.
They have also been hunting down top officials in their homes.
Late on Monday, gunmen in army uniforms forced their way into the southern Baghdad home of Major General Adnan Faush Farawni, a senior advisor to the defence ministry, shooting him and his son dead.
Government negotiations continue
Against this backdrop of violence, politicians pressed on with their negotiations on forming a new government.
A final sticking point involved the number of ministries to be given to members of outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s party.
”The negotiations are continuing above all with the Iraqi List of Mr Allawi, as well as with the Sunni Arabs,” a representative involved in the talks, Mariam al-Rais, from the election-winning United Iraqi Alliance, said on Tuesday.
The Shi’ite-based alliance is expected to be handed 17 ministries, including interior, oil and finance, while the Kurds will get nine, retaining the foreign ministry, she said.
Sunnis are slated to get four ministries, Turkmen one, Christians one and Allawi’s party four, she added.
Turkey’s armed forces chief General Hilmi Ozkok, meanwhile, warned that Iraqi Kurdish attempts to take control of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk could throw the entire region into turmoil.
Kirkuk, with its large oil resources, should belong to all Iraqis and not just one ethnic group, he argued.
”That is why it is important for Kirkuk to have a special status,” Ozkok said. ”We have said several times that Kirkuk is a problem area ready to explode … and that it would affect the entire region if it explodes.” — Sapa-AFP