60 bodies found in Baghdad in 24 hours - source
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-09-13 15:28 BAGHDAD - A total of 60
unidentified bodies have been found in various parts of Baghdad over the past 24
hours, an Interior Ministry source said on Wednesday.
The unusually high 24-hour tally was recorded despite a month-old security
crackdown in Iraq's capital by U.S. and Iraqi troops.
The source said most bodies were bound and shot in the head and many bore
signs of torture -- trademarks of sectarian death squads and kidnap gangs
plaguing the capital.
The United Nations estimated two months ago about 100 people a day were being
killed in Iraq in sectarian bloodshed between the country's majority Shi'ite
Muslims and minority Sunni Arabs.
U.S. military commanders have said the increased presence of troops on the
streets, sweeping through violent neighbourhoods to prepare them for Iraqi
police control, had reduced the "murder rate" by more than 40 percent in August.
That figure covered 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 17 percent to 1,536 from a record
figure in July.
Morgue officials, who have stopped giving data to the media, say about 90
percent of the bodies they see are victims of violence.
More than one in four Iraqis live in Baghdad.
Sectarian killings in the capital have created waves of refugees, fleeing
homes in neighbourhoods where they feel in a minority and hardening a divide
along the Tigris river between mainly Sunni west Baghdad and the mainly Shi'ite
east.
Iraq's four-month-old coalition government is pursuing a "national
reconciliation plan" to try to avert an all-out civil war.
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