Baghdad, Iraq – Sectarian violence has forced about 100,000 families across Iraq to flee their homes, a top Iraqi official said, and 16 Iraqis were killed Saturday, six of them tortured in captivity.
An American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in the capital, raising to 70 the number of U.S. service members who have died in Iraq this month, according to an Associated Press count.
Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi told reporters in the southern city of Najaf that 90 percent of the displaced were Shiites like himself and the rest Sunnis, the minority that held sway under former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Other estimates of the number of displaced families have been lower.
Dr. Salah Abdul-Razzaq, spokesman of the Shiite Endowment, a government body that runs Shiite religious institutions, put the number of displaced families at 13,750 nationwide, or about 90,000 people.
That includes 25,000 Iraqis who have fled their homes since an attack on a Shiite mosque in Samarra on Feb. 22 triggered a wave of sectarian attacks on Sunni mosques and clerics.
Last week, U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told reporters that U.S. forces had found no “widespread movement” of Shiites and Sunnis away from religiously mixed areas, despite reports to the contrary by Iraqi officials.
The Army soldier was killed by a roadside bomb southwest of the capital, the military said. At least 2,399 members of the U.S. military have died since the war began, according to an AP count.
In Saturday’s worst violence, the bodies of six handcuffed, blindfolded and tortured men were found in the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.
The area has seen frequent sectarian violence.
