Baghdad, Iraq – More Iraqi civilians were killed in Baghdad during the first three months of this year than at any time since the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime – at least 3,800 people, most of them found hogtied and shot execution-style by the assassins stalking this city.
Others were strangled, electrocuted, stabbed, garroted or hanged. Some died in bombings. Many bore signs of torture.
Every day, about 40 bodies arrive at the central Baghdad morgue, an official said. The numbers demonstrate a shift in the nature of the bloodshed, which has increasingly targeted both sides of Iraq’s sectarian divide.
In the previous three years, the killings were indiscriminate and impersonal. Violence mostly came in the form of bombs wielded by the Sunni-led insurgency that primarily targeted the country’s Shiite majority: those riding the wrong bus, shopping at the wrong market or standing in the wrong line.
Now, the killings are systematic and personal. Masked gunmen storm into homes, and the victims – the majority of them Sunnis – are never seen alive again. Targeted killings now claim nine times more lives than car bombs, according to rates provided by a high-ranking U.S. military official, who released them on the condition of anonymity.
Statistics obtained at the Baghdad morgue showed a steady increase in the number of shootings and other types of targeted killings over the past year, with a spike in March, after the Feb. 22 bombing of one of the holiest Shiite Muslim shrines in the country.
The morgue logs every autopsied body, cataloging each death with a folder and pictures of the dead. The director and the head of statistics at the morgue provided the numbers and descriptions for this report.
On a recent day, coffins were stacked against the wall outside the morgue, waiting to be filled. Every 30 minutes or so, police officers arrived, unloading more bodies from their trucks. With each new load, crowds of people rushed to look at the bodies, searching for missing relatives.
The number of bombing victims, who do not normally undergo autopsies, was calculated from daily reports by hospital and police officials between Jan. 1 and April 1. Those reports were conservative and did not include Iraqi security forces, Iraqis killed by U.S. or Iraqi forces, and Iraqis killed outside the capital.
At the central morgue, the freezers are stuffed with bodies, and forensic workers are overwhelmed.
“Our small institute just cannot keep up with the number of corpses we are receiving daily,” said Abed Razzaq, the acting director.
Gunmen operate throughout Baghdad – killing brazenly during daylight hours and moving with impunity during curfew.
Because there is rarely any meaningful investigation of the deaths, it is all but impossible to determine to what extent the killers are motivated by sectarian feuds or by revenge, money or tribal quarrels.
“I cannot say if the killers are trained professionals or just criminals, but the pattern we see is torture and beatings” before the victims are killed, “mostly by shooting or hanging,” Razzaq said.
