Iraqi gunmen on Monday murdered five teachers and a driver at a primary school as United States forces released more than 500 prisoners from the notorious Abu Ghraib jail.
In the school attack, 10 gunmen dressed as police officers dragged the teachers from their classrooms at the Al Jazeera Primary School in Muwalha, south of the capital, took them to an empty classroom and shot them, police said.
The area around Muwalha is known as the Triangle of Death because of the number of kidnappings and murders there, and the school killings appeared to be the latest bid by Sunni extremists to spark a sectarian war.
Al-Qaeda’s frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has declared all-out war on the majority Shi’ite population, raising fears of a surge in attacks in the run-up to the October 15 referendum on a draft Constitution.
Sunnis believe the charter favours Shi’ites and Kurds.
In further violence, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a bus carrying oil ministry staff in the capital, killing seven and wounding 27, an interior ministry official said.
Most of the victims were from the oil ministry, but at least two of those killed were police officers from a nearby police academy.
Also in Baghdad, gunmen kidnapped an Egyptian telecom engineer working as a contractor for the Iraqna cellphone company from his car in Al-Hamra district, an interior ministry official said.
In Amman, the brother of a Jordanian truck driver kidnapped last week on his first business trip to Iraq said the missing man’s tortured body was found dumped in the desert close to the Jordanian border.
The US military, meanwhile, said three American soldiers were killed in two roadside bombings, two of them in western Baghdad and a third south-east of the capital.
The latest deaths bring to 1 912 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of March 2003.
Another five civilian defence department employees also lost their lives, according to Pentagon figures.
Coalition forces in the rebel heartland of western Iraq said they had bombed a suspected al-Qaeda safe house where 20 insurgents were believed to be holed up.
A US statement did not specify how many were killed in the raid, but said a senior Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader, Abu Nasir, and about 20 other men were in the house at the time.
Prisoners released
The violence erupted as the US military released more than 500 prisoners from the notorious Abu Ghraib jail to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan beginning in early October.
”In the spirit of the holy month of Ramadan, the Iraqi government requested a special release board and worked with multinational forces to expedite the release of more than 1 000 security detainees from Abu Ghraib,” the military said.
The government and US forces ”decided to release the detainees to allow them to be with families and loved ones to celebrate the holy month and to help in the process of building a new Iraq”, it said.
It is the second large-scale release of prisoners from Abu Ghraib, a jail on the outskirts of Baghdad where a prisoner-abuse scandal last year dealt a severe blow to the credibility of the US-led presence in Iraq.
Those released this week were not guilty of serious offences and have ”confessed to their crimes, renounced violence and pledged to be good citizens of Iraq”, the US statement added.
The releases are ”part of a governmental programme” prepared ”over several weeks”, the prime minister’s spokesperson Leith Kubba said.
Asked if the release was timed to encourage greater Sunni participation in the upcoming referendum, Kubba said it ”would create a better atmosphere”.
About 10 000 Iraqis are currently being held on insurgency-related charges.
The releases came amid fresh claims of prisoner abuse by US forces, with the New York-based Human Rights Watch saying soldiers have routinely beaten and mistreated Iraqi prisoners at a base near Fallujah.
Pending investigation of the case, a US military spokesperson said the army has investigated 400 allegations of detainee abuse to date, which has resulted in some form of action against 230 soldiers.
US Senator John McCain told ABC television such abuses have to stop.
”It is hurting America’s image abroad. I don’t know if these allegations are true or not, but they have to be investigated,” he said. — Sapa-AFP