BAGHDAD, March 8: The bodies of 18 men, bound, blindfolded and strangled, were found in Baghdad on Tuesday, apparent victims of sectarian turmoil gripping Iraq and threatening the formation of a coalition government.
Iraq’s interior minister, a hate figure for many Sunnis who accuse him of condoning death squads, escaped an apparent assassination attempt when a roadside bomb blasted his convoy. Minister Bayan Jabor, however, was not in his car.
The dumping of bodies bearing signs of torture and killed execution-style is a feature of the violence that has plagued Iraq since the US occupation of 2003.
The 18 bodies, discovered by US troops in western Baghdad, had all been garrotted and had their hands bound with plastic ties, police and hospital officials said.
The victims, a mixture of middle-aged and young men in civilian clothes, carried no identifying papers, police said.
A policeman at the Yarmuk hospital morgue pointed to their clothing and long hair as an indication some may have been religious extremists linked to Al Qaeda. Reporters who saw the bodies said many appeared to be Iraqis.
Police sources said only one had so far been identified by a relative. He was a guard at an oil refinery in Baghdad.
The policeman at the hospital said many of the bloodied bodies appeared to have been beaten while some had small burn marks, suggesting they were tortured before being killed.
Senior officials, aware of the potential for sectarian anger if it becomes clear all are either Sunni or Shia, made no formal comment on the religious identities of the dead.
Iraqi police said the bodies were dumped near the Amriya district, a stronghold of Sunni groups.
MINISTER’S CONVOY ATTACKED: Sunnis have accused the Shia-led government’s police and other security forces of abducting and killing Sunni civilians — an accusation Interior Minister Jabor and the police deny.
Interior ministry vehicles normally used to transport Mr Jabor and his aides were attacked as they left the ministry on Wednesday. A roadside bomb destroyed one car in the convoy, killing two and wounding five.
It follows the assassination of the top Iraqi general in Baghdad by a sniper in the capital on Monday.
The US commander in Iraq, Gen George Casey, described Maj Gen Mubdar Hatim al Dulaimi at his funeral as ‘a courageous soldier, a passionate leader and an Iraqi hero’.
More than 500 people have been killed since the Feb 22 bombing of A shrine in Samarra.
Despite the daily bombings and shootings there is a relative lull in the violence and officials have said the immediate crisis seems to be over — for the time being at least.
But the US ambassador conceded on Tuesday Iraq could still descend into civil war, saying Americans ‘opened Pandora’s box’ when they toppled Saddam in 2003 and another incident like that in Samarra could push it to the brink of war again.
Eight people, including four policemen, were killed in bombings in Baghdad and the western town of Fallujah on Wednesday. The bodies of two people were found bound and blindfold and shot dead in eastern Baghdad, police said.—Reuters