Police in Abu Ghraib, just outside Baghdad, found a small truck containing
the bodies of 15 men who had been tortured in captivity, said police Lt. Maitham
Abdul Razzaq. Two other corpses were found in southwest Baghdad; one appeared to
have been hanged, said police Capt. Qassim Hassan.
On Sunday, at least three U.S. soldiers and 31 Iraqis were killed, including
seven who died when mortars hit just outside the heavily guarded Green Zone in
Baghdad, not far from Iraq's Defense Ministry.
Sunni Arabs say Shiite militias have infiltrated the Interior Ministry —
controlled by the biggest Shiite party — and used death squads to kill Sunnis
following the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad.
But the killings have gone both ways.
Police said the bodies of six Shiites were found Sunday in the mainly Sunni
district of Azamiyah in Baghdad, their hands and legs bound and their bodies
showing signs of torture. Two more bodies were found in a mixed district south
of Baghdad.
The chief of the Azamiyah district council, Sheik Hassan Sabri Salman, said
relatives also identified the bodies of 14 Sunnis kidnapped last week. The
bodies were handcuffed with signs of torture, he said. Police did not confirm
the deaths.
The Iraqi Islamic Party, the main Sunni faction in parliament and a likely
participant in the next Cabinet, warned of "the repercussions of sectarian
cleansing." It urged the new government to stop "the criminal gangs" involved in
the killings.
Khalilzad also said Iraq's next government must decommission sectarian
militias and integrate them into the national armed forces, warning that the
armed groups represent the "infrastructure for civil war."
He issued a strong warning Sunday against militias, calling them "a serious
challenge to stability in Iraq to building a successful country based on rule of
law."
"There is a need for a decommissioning, demobilization and reintegration plan
for these unauthorized military formations," he told a news conference with
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in the northern city of Irbil.
A key question will be control of the Interior Ministry, currently held by
the Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The SCIRI ran the
feared Badr Brigade militia during Saddam Hussein's rule but insists the group
has given up arms, a claim many Sunnis reject.