Baghdad death squads kill 65 as bombs kill 39

updated 1:36 p.m. ET Sept. 13, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Police said Wednesday they found the bodies of 65 men who had been tortured, shot and dumped, most around Baghdad, while car bombs and mortar attacks killed at least 39 people and wounded dozens more.

Two U.S. soldiers were also killed — one on Monday from enemy action in restive Anbar province and the other Tuesday by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad, the U.S. military command said.

The U.S. military said it could not confirm all the execution-style killings and said the numbers they had for the bodies so far was lower than that reported by police.

“It is looking like about a 50 percent discrepancy on execution-style killings so far,” said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, chief of the media relations division for the Multi-National Corps-Iraq.

The reason for the difference was not immediately clear. The confusion over numbers underscores the difficulty of obtaining accurate death tolls in Iraq, which lacks the reporting and tracking systems of most modern nations. Also, counts by the U.S. military often lag behind those of the police.

Bodies dumped in Sunni areas
Police said 60 of the bodies were found overnight scattered around Baghdad, with the majority dumped in predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhoods, police said.

All the bodies were bound, bore signs of torture and had been shot, police 1st Lt. Thayer Mahmoud said. Such killings are usually the work of death squads, operated by both Sunni Arabs and Shiite gangs and militias, who kidnap people and usually torture them with power drills or beat them badly before shooting them.

The head of Iraq’s largest Sunni Arab political bloc called on Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to honor a pledge to disband militias. Sunni Arabs blame many Shiite militias for equipping many of the death squads.

“We hope the government carries out what it pledged and disband militias and considers them terrorist organizations,” Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the Iraqi Accordance Front told The Associated Press. His party holds 44 seats in the 275-member parliament.

“Their presence is deteriorating the situation and bringing more troubles to the political atmosphere.” al-Dulaimi added. “We call upon all religious authorities to raise their voices and demand militias be disarmed.”

According to police, 45 of the bodies were discovered in predominantly Sunni Arab parts of western Baghdad. The rest were found in predominantly Shiite areas of eastern Baghdad. Another five bodies were found floating in the Tigris River in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad, according to police Lt. Mohammed al-Shimari.

Bomb blasts kill dozens
In the capital, a car bomb killed at least 19 people and wounded more than 62 after it detonated in a large square used mostly as a parking lot near the main headquarters of Baghdad’s traffic police department, police Cap. Mohammed Abdel-Ghani said.

But the U.S. military reported the death toll at 15 killed and 25 wounded, and said the blast was caused by two car bombs.

In eastern Baghdad, a parked car bomb exploded next to a passing Iraqi police patrol in the Zayona neighborhood, killing at least 12 people and wounding 34, the U.S. military reported. That number was higher than the eight originally reported by Iraqi police.

Using those two figures supplied by the military, the overall count would drop to at least 31 killed.

Two mortar shells struck al-Rashad police station in southeastern Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding two others, said police 1st Lt. Mohammed Kheyoun.

Another two policemen were killed when two mortar rounds landed near their station in Baghdad’s eastern neighborhood of Mashtal, police Maj. Maher Hamid Mousa said. Three others were injured.

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