Baghdad, Iraq – At least eight Iraqis were found shot near a Baghdad dam and a slain Iraqi Kurd was left in a garbage dump in northern Iraq, police said today, raising the number of bodies recovered in recent days to 50. The government vowed to track down those responsible, saying insurgents were seeking to exploit sectarian rivalries.
Elsewhere, a series of attacks killed at least 19 Iraqis, including nine soldiers who died when two car bombs exploded in quick succession at a crowded Baghdad market.
Anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr also came out of hiding today for the first time since his fighters clashed with American forces in Najaf and Baghdad in August, delivering a fiery speech demanding that coalition forces leave Iraq and that Saddam Hussein be punished.
Interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, meanwhile, paid a surprise visit to the home of Iraq’s top Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in the holy city of Najaf, al-Sistani aide Maitham Faysal told AP. It was the leader’s first meeting with al-Sistani since the new government was formed.
Batches of bodies were found in various areas over the weekend, from a garbage-strewn vacant lot in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum to a Latifiyah chicken farm south of the capital in a region dubbed the Triangle of Death.
A spokesman for al-Jaafari condemned the killings and said security forces were 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,” spokesman Laith Kuba told The Associated Press. “The government is aware of that and will not let this plan succeed.”
Few details were available on the motives behind the killings.
Insurgents regularly target Iraqi security forces, government officials and others deemed to be collaborating with U.S.-led forces in the country. Others are kidnapped and killed in attempts to extort ransom. But there have also been a stream of retaliatory attacks between armed Sunni and Shiite groups.
Most of the bodies were found over the weekend, including those of two Iraqi journalists 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 in the chicken farm and a judge found nearby. Seven others were discovered elsewhere in the Latifiyah area, 20 miles south of the capital.
Many of the victims had been blindfolded, bound and shot multiple times in the head. Most – including 13 found in Sadr City – had no documents to identify them.
Another body was found today, this time an Iraqi Kurd shot in the head and chest and left in a garbage dump in Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, police and witnesses said. An AP writer saw the victim, identified by police as Najat Saadoun, with his hands tied behind his back.
Associated Press Television News also obtained footage today showing at least three more bodies, who police said had been shot in the head, being brought into a Baghdad hospital. Police said they were among six bodies found late Sunday near a dam in the capital’s Shiite-dominated eastern Shaab neighborhood. Two other victims were found alive, but died later in the hospital.
An influential association of Sunni Muslim clerics identified the victims as from the Sunni minority and said the two victims who briefly survived told relatives they were seized by members of the Shiite-dominated government’s own security forces and shot during a series of raids.
Defense Minister Saadoun al-Duleimi denied the accusation, saying the killings were carried out by “terrorists” wearing military uniforms.
The grisly finds were a new twist in an endless stream of violence, with more than 460 people killed in a wave of bombings and ambushes since the April 28 announcement of the new Iraqi government.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sharply criticized Syria for what she called unwillingness to close its borders to terrorists she said are to blame for some of the violence in Iraq.
“Their unwillingness to deal with the crossings of their border into Iraq is frustrating the will of the Iraqi people,” and leading to the deaths of innocent Iraqis, Rice said in Ireland en route home from a surprise trip to see Iraq’s new leaders.
Rice’s 11-hour visit to Iraq on Sunday coincided with the end of a weeklong U.S. Marine campaign to root out followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq’s most-wanted militant, along the Iraq side of the border.
Army Col. Ben Hodges said today that reports earlier this month that al-Zarqawi had been injured were not confirmed, but he stressed that the military’s focus wasn’t only on the Jordanian-born militant.
“We’re looking for him but this is not a war versus Zarqawi,” Hodges told CNN in an interview from Iraq, adding supporters of the ousted regime were “the larger and more dangerous element of the insurgency.” U.S. and Iraqi forces detained another 52 suspected militants in raids Sunday and today in Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk.
Iraqi forces also captured bombmaker Salim Youssef Khafif Hussein Friday in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, the government said today.
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.
Al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric who is wanted in the 2003 assassination of another cleric, held a press conference in Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad.
“I demand several things, including punishing Saddam and calling on the Iraqi government, religious movements and political factions to work hard to kick out the occupier,” al-Sadr said. “I want the immediate withdrawal of the occupation forces.” Insurgents also stepped up attacks against members of Iraq’s security forces they regard as collaborators of the U.S.-led occupation.
A car bomb exploded near a market in Baghdad’s Abu Dshir area, a Shiite enclave in the predominantly Sunni Dora neighborhood, causing numerous civilian casualties, police said. Minutes later, another car bomb exploded, targeting soldiers who responded to the initial blast. At least nine soldiers were killed and five others wounded, police said.
A roadside bomb also killed four Iraqi soldiers as they raced to a fire station that had come under mortar fire in Khan Bani Saad, 20 miles northeast of Baghdad, police Col. Mudafar Mohammed said.
Four other people were wounded in the attack.
Two Iraqis were killed and four wounded in Baghdad’s southwestern Saydiya district when another roadside bomb exploded as an Iraqi army convoy passed, said police Lt. Hussein Alwan.
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 policeman Razzaq Ubaid Hinaidi and his wife in a drive-by shooting late Sunday near the village of Aalgaya, 60 miles south of the capital, said Capt. Muthana Khalid Ali. The couple’s two children were seriously wounded.
