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| Iraq |
| Baghdad death squads kill 60 as bombs kill 22 |
| 2006-09-13 |
| BAGHDAD, Iraq - Police recovered 60 bodies over the past day across Baghdad, most bound and tortured, officials said on Wednesday, highlighting how sectarian death squads are still plaguing the Iraqi capital despite a major security drive. Two car bombs targeting police killed 22 people during the morning and wounded another 76 people. The first killed 14 outside Baghdad’s traffic police headquarters, a second targeted guards at an electricity station in the east of the city. The death of another U.S. soldier was confirmed in Anbar province, where the commander denied suggestions his force had lost control to al-Qaida and other Sunni insurgents but said stabilizing the western desert region would be a job for Iraqi politicians and their U.S.-trained troops and police. A U.S. soldier was also killed overnight near Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi leaders say that the biggest threat to Iraq no longer comes from the three-year-old revolt among ousted president Saddam Hussein’s fellow Sunni Muslims but from a civil war between Sunnis and the Shiite majority now in power. Iran calls for immediate U.S. pullout Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki met Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran. Fellow Shiite Islamist leaders there have pledged support and security for Iraq, drawing a wary response from Washington which accused Tehran of funding militants there. Khamenei, echoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called on the 145,000 U.S. troops to leave Iraq: “Most problems in Iraq will be removed with the departure of occupiers. So we wish for their immediate evacuation,” state media quoted him as saying. Maliki says he wants the Americans gone, but not until Iraqi forces are capable of handling the violence they face. An Interior Ministry official and sources at Baghdad police headquarters said a total of 60 unidentified bodies were found, freshly killed, in various parts of Baghdad over the past day. Four others, one a woman, were fished out of the Tigris river just south of the capital -- another daily occurrence. The tally was among the highest of late, despite a month-old security crackdown by reinforced U.S. and Iraqi troops. “But we’ve had worse days,” the Interior Ministry official said. “Sometimes we sent 65 or even 100 to the morgue.” Fifteen bodies were found scattered, some in roadside garbage heaps, close to the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City in eastern Baghdad, he said. In the southern district of Saidiya, the bloodied remains of five bakers were discovered. Most of the dead were bound and shot in the head and many bore signs of torture, the official said -- marks of sectarian death squads and kidnap gangs. Daily toll The United Nations estimated two months ago that about 100 people a day were being killed in a covert sectarian dirty war. U.S. military commanders have said the increased presence of troops on the street, sweeping through violent neighborhoods to prepare them for Iraqi police control, had reduced the ”murder rate” by more than 40 percent in August. That figure included individual shootings but not bigger attacks such as bombings. Last week, the U.N. office in Baghdad said the number of unidentified bodies taken to the city morgue in August fell by about 17 percent from the record month of July to 1,536. Morgue officials, who have stopped giving data to the media, say that about 90 percent of the bodies they see are victims of violence. The Health Ministry has yet to publish its full data for other violent deaths in August. Figures for July put the total at more than 3,000 people, concentrated in Baghdad, where more than one in four of the 26 million Iraqis live. The killings have made tens of thousands flee areas where they are in a minority, hardening a divide along the Tigris between mainly Sunni west Baghdad and the mostly Shiite east. Maliki’s four-month-old unity government is pursuing a "national reconciliation plan" to avert all-out civil war but major strains are clear between rival factions, notably over how far the oil-rich Shiite south can have autonomy from Baghdad. Parliament’s Sunni speaker met leaders of major blocs to try to break deadlock over proposed legislation ahead of a looming constitutional deadline. Further talks were set for Saturday. Saddam’s trial for genocide against the Kurds in 1988 continued in Baghdad with the prosecution, in an unusual move, asking the judge to resign for being too lenient in letting the defendants make speeches and intimidating comments to witnesses. The judge refused. |
| Posted by:mcsegeek1 |
| #4 Khameini: Most problems in Iraq will be removed with the departure of occupiers. Yeah, I suppose we'd see a lot of the "problems" rush home to Iran if we marched our troops out of Iraq and into Qom. |
| Posted by: eLarson 2006-09-13 17:08 |
| #3 I wonder how many of the killed just happened to be Iranian spies? I am also suspicious of the torture element. When you have an effort at ethnic cleansing in full swing, torture is usually less, as opposed to just killing. Torture takes time, time that could be used in driving out the hated minority. But revenge, on the other hand, is far more quality than quantity. So I suspect that in the vast majority of the cases, it is targetted killing, not just sectarian. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-09-13 14:32 |
| #2 "Khamenei, echoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called on the 145,000 U.S. troops to leave Iraq: “Most problems in Iraq will be removed with the departure of occupiers. So we wish for their immediate evacuation,” state media quoted him as saying." and of course Iranians will not be considered occupiers when the stroll on in and steal this fledgling democracy that is Iraq. Nope no occupiers here just us fun loving, sharia living Jihadis... |
| Posted by: TomAnon 2006-09-13 13:27 |
| #1 Is there any breakdown on who is getting tortured and murdered? Is this torture for information, revenge, or pleasure? |
| Posted by: Penguin 2006-09-13 12:22 |