Baghdad, Iraq – Police in Ramadi uncovered 17 decomposing corpses buried in two schoolyards in a district that until recently was under the control of al-Qaeda fighters. At least 85 people were killed or found dead across the country Tuesday.
The adult bodies were discovered in the Anbar provincial capital after students and teachers returned to the schools a week ago and noticed an increasingly putrid odor and stray dogs digging in the area, Police Maj. Laith al-Dulaimi said.
He said one body had not been recovered from a separate burial site behind one of the schools because authorities feared it was booby-trapped with a bomb.
Ramadi had been a stronghold of Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda fighters until recently, when the U.S. forces in the region and the Iraqi government successfully negotiated with many local tribal leaders to split them off from the more militant insurgent groups.
In a sign that Shiite death squads are on the move again, 25 bodies, most showing signs of torture, were found dumped in Baghdad on Tuesday.
The three-day total, after several weeks of much smaller numbers, was 67.
On Monday, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his six Cabinet ministers to quit the government to protest Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s refusal to back calls for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal.
Al-Maliki, meanwhile, said his government was talking with some Sunni insurgent groups, including members of Saddam Hussein’s former regime, as he struggled to reconcile disaffected and violent bands of fighters.
And in separate attempts to ease sectarian divisions, a group of senior Sunni Muslim clerics visited Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in the holy city of Najaf. They emerged from the meeting and said followers of the two sects were “brothers.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of residents of Basra, Iraq’s second- largest city, crowded into a huge tent erected Tuesday in front of the governor’s office for the start of a three-day sit-in to demand his resignation. Gov. Mohammed al-Waili was not believed to be in the building.
The peaceful sit-in began a day after thousands of people paraded from a downtown mosque to al-Waili’s office in a demonstration that defied orders from Baghdad officials.
Residents of Basra, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, have long complained of poor city services – garbage pickup, water and electricity.
The U.S. military on Tuesday announced the death of a Marine from a “nonhostile incident” while on combat patrol in western Anbar province. The incident occurred Monday and was under investigation.
