Police found dozens of bullet-riddled corpses in Baghdad on Wednesday, and two car bombs killed 28 people and wounded scores more in the Iraqi capital as a wave of sectarian violence ravaged the country.
At least 69 bodies were recovered in the past 24 hours from across Iraq, including 64 from Baghdad, many of them shot dead execution-style with a bullet to the head, security officials said.
Three bodies were found in the restive city of Baquba, north-east of Baghdad, and two in the town of Suweira, south of the capital.
One of the two bodies recovered from Suweira was headless, while dozens of those found in Baghdad were handcuffed and blindfolded.
A security official said most of the bodies found in Baghdad were discovered in the city’s Sunni- and Shi’ite-populated west, which includes the violent districts and neighbourhoods such as Mansur, Ameriyah and Yarmuk.
Death squads from the two rival communities have brutally gunned down civilians on a daily basis in the raging sectarian conflict that has engulfed Baghdad since the February bombing of a revered Shi’ite shrine.
The latest bout of bloodletting has once again raised fears of the war-torn country sliding into an all-out civil war.
Thousands of people have died since the sectarian violence began surging across Iraq in February, but Baghdad remains the worst hit with dozens of bodies found every week.
On Wednesday, Baghdad was also hit by two car bombs that left another 28 people dead and scores more wounded.
In the deadliest attack, rebels killed 20 people and wounded 51 others in a car bomb attack against a police patrol in east Baghdad, interior ministry spokesperson Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf said.
“Five of those killed were police officers,” he said, adding the attack took place near a traffic-police headquarters.
In another similar attack, eight people were killed and 19 wounded when insurgents blew up a parked car loaded with explosives near two police patrols in eastern Baghdad, a security official said on condition of anonymity.
“The dead include three police officers,” he said.
A series of mortar bomb attacks also left a civilian dead, while two bystanders were killed when gunmen attempted to kidnap the owner of Zakhura Money Exchange, a foreign exchange outlet in west Baghdad.
Insurgents have managed to carry out massive bombings as well as sectarian killings in Baghdad, despite the presence of more than 30 000 Iraqi and United States troops on the streets as part of a security crackdown since mid-June.
But rebel violence was not restricted to Baghdad itself.
Three Iraqis were killed by gunmen in separate attacks in Baquba, one of the most dangerous cities in the country.
On Wednesday, the US military also announced the deaths of two of its service officers, taking its total losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 2 670, according to an Agence France-Presse count based on Pentagon figures.
A soldier was killed on Tuesday, south of Baghdad, while another died of wounds on Monday in the western al-Anbar province, the military said.
Iraq’s Sunni Anbar province remains a challenge to the military more than three years after former president Saddam Hussein was toppled.
On Tuesday, top US commander Major General Richard Zilmer accepted the Sunni insurgency in the province remained “active” and was heavily influenced by terror group al-Qaeda.
Insisting coalition forces had managed to offer security in parts of the province, Zilmer said: “We have found making the same progress politically and economically, throughout all of Anbar, to be much more challenging.”
Zilmer was reacting to recent media reports quoting an internal study by the marines that Iraq’s most notorious province was under the control of insurgents and not the military.
The Washington Post on Monday said that a marine study had concluded that the prospects of securing the Anbar province are “dim and there is almost nothing the US military can do to improve the political and social situation there”.
The bulk of US military’s losses in Iraq have been in the Anbar province. — AFP