MOSUL, March 28: Gunmen massacred 45 men in an overnight rampage in an apparent revenge for bombings that killed 75 people in a mixed Iraqi town once hailed by US President George W. Bush as a beacon hope.

“We received 45 bodies of handcuffed and blindfolded men from al-Wahada neighbourhood overnight. They were killed yesterday just after the bomb,” said a doctor at Tal Afar hospital in northern Iraq on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.The wanton shootings and lethal bombings underscore the raging Sunni-Shia sectarian warfare that continues to grip the country, as well as a Sunni-led insurgency fighting against the Shia-led government and its US backers.

Lt-Col Mohammed Ahmed Salah, a spokesman for the Iraqi army in Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province that is home to Tal Afar, confirmed on Wednesday there had been a “reprisal act”. “A violent incident happened (on Tuesday) and a reprisal act happened in al-Wahada, which is in the south of the town, just after the bombings,” the officer said.

“The situation is under control right now and we have started an investigation into the incident.” The Iraqi army has slapped a strict curfew on the town, deployed armoured vehicles in downtown Tal Afar and banned even police from moving, an official said, also on condition of anonymity.

The apparent style of killing, by handcuffing and blindfolding the victims, indicated that the slaughter was the work of Shia gunmen, known for such execution-style slaying of Sunni Arabs.

On Wednesday, two Iraqi policemen were killed in attacks on a local government building in another former rebel stronghold, this time Fallujah in western Iraq, including by truck bombs loaded with chlorine gas, officials said.

Police Captain Abdul Sattar al-Jumaili said two policemen were killed and one civilian wounded in an attack on a joint Iraqi-US centre which usually acts as a window for jobless Iraqis searching for work.

US officer First Lieutenant Shawn Mercer said from Fallujah that two suicide truck bombers exploded chlorine gas near the building.—AFP