Mortar barrages, roadside bombings and drive-by shootings killed 10 Iraqis, officials said on Monday, and Iraq’s new government vowed to track down the killers of more than 40 people found slain in the past 48 hours.
Batches of bodies, many blindfolded and bound, were found in various locations over the weekend, from a rubbish-strewn vacant lot in Baghdad’s Sadr City to a chicken farm south of the capital, in a region dubbed the Triangle of Death.
Few details were available on the possible reasons for the killings. Insurgents regularly target Iraqi security forces, government officials and others deemed to be collaborating with United States-led forces in the country. Others are kidnapped and killed to extort lucrative ransoms from their families. But there have also been a stream of retaliatory attacks between armed Sunni and Shi’ite groups.
The spokesperson for Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari condemned the killings and said security forces are determined to catch those responsible.
The attacks ”aim to create sectarian fighting in the country because such clashes could bring more recruits to [militant] groups”, spokesperson Laith Kuba said on Monday.
”The government is aware of that and will not let this plan succeed.”
Over the weekend, the bodies of at least 41 people were found.
They included two Iraqi journalists found in their car on a road south of Baghdad, 10 soldiers dumped in the battleground city of Ramadi, two truck drivers lying with nine other bodies at the chicken farm, and a judge found nearby.
Many of the victims had been blindfolded, bound, shot multiple times in the head and dumped in the open. Most — including the 13 found in Sadr City — had no documents to identify them.
Associated Press Television News obtained footage on Monday showing at least three more bodies, who police said had been shot in the head, being brought into a Baghdad hospital. The bodies had been dumped near a dam in the capital’s eastern Shaab neighbourhood, police said.
Another body was found on Monday, this time an Iraqi Kurd shot in the head and chest and left in a garbage dump in Kirkuk, 290km north of Baghdad, police and witnesses said.
An Associated Press writer saw the victim, identified by police as Najat Saadoun, with his hands tied behind his back.
More than 460 people have been killed in a wave of bombings and ambushes launched since the April 28 announcement of the new Iraqi government.
That violence continued with officials saying on Monday that mortar rounds, home-made bombs and drive-by shootings killed eight people and injured at least 10.
Four Iraqi soldiers were killed and at least four people wounded after a mortar and roadside bomb attack against a fire station in Khan Bani Saad, a town 30km north-east of Baghdad, said police Colonel Mudafar Mohammed.
A roadside bomb killed four soldiers who had raced to the town’s fire station, which had come under mortar attack, Mohammed said.
”I just arrived at the gate of the base and mortar rounds landed on it, injuring some of us,” said Lieutenant Colonel Jabbar Hussein, who was taken to a nearby hospital suffering from shrapnel wounds.
Two civilians were killed in Baghdad’s south-western Saydiya district when another roadside bomb exploded as an Iraqi army convoy passed, said police Lieutenant Hussein Alwan. The explosion also wounded four people, including two Iraqi civilians, Alwan added.
Saydiya witnessed another attack on Monday when an Iraqi army brigadier general survived an ambush attempt by eight gunmen who attacked his convoy as it entered a traffic intersection, an interior ministry spokesperson said.
Soldiers returned fire, killing four gunmen while the remaining militants fled on foot, the spokesperson added. Inside the gunmen’s cars, soldiers found 15 hand grenades, four rifles, mortar rounds and explosives.
At least three mortar rounds slammed into different parts of the capital, including one that hit the Engineering College of Mustansiriyah University, killing two people and wounding 12, the interior ministry said.
Gunmen also killed Baghdad-based police officer Razzaq Ubaid Hinaidi and his wife in a drive-by shooting late on Sunday near the village of Aalgaya, about 95km south of Baghdad, said Captain Muthana Khalid Ali. The couple’s two children were also badly wounded in the attack.
Amid the rampant violence, US and Iraqi forces detained 38 suspected militants in raids on Sunday and Monday in Baghdad and Kirkuk.
The Iraqi government said on Monday its forces captured car-bomb-maker Salim Youssef Khafif Hussein, in Mosul, 360km north-west of Baghdad.
Hussein, also known as Agha Abu Dawoud, is said to have close links with Abu Talha, the head of operations in Mosul for Iraq’s most wanted militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the statement said.
Hussein ”supervised and facilitated” most of the car-bomb attacks in Mosul, the statement said. — Sapa-AP