Winks Blog

87 Male Bodies Found, Killed Execution Style. = 1 Killed, 7 Injured

Good Morning,

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Police in the past 24 hours have found the bodies of at least 87 men killed by execution style shootings in a gruesome wave of apparent sectarian killing, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday. They include at least 29 bodies stacked in a mass grave in an eastern Shiite neighborhood.

Most of the discarded corpses were found in the capital and three in the northern city of Mosul, police said.

Acting on an anonymous tip, police found a 6-by-8-meter (yard) hole in a empty field. It contained at least 29 dead men _ most of them in their underwear _ in Kamaliyah, a mostly Shiite east Baghdad suburb, said Interior Ministry official Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi. He estimated they had been killed about three days ago.

Local residents offered scarves to help cover the bodies, which were laid out on the ground. Police guarded the site as members of a Shiite militia dug for more corpses. An Associated Press photographer took pictures of the grave but was warned not to publish them.

An abandoned minibus containing 15 more bodies was found earlier on the main road between two mostly Sunni west Baghdad neighborhoods _ not far from where another minibus containing 18 bodies was discovered last week, said al-Mohammedawi.

At least 40 more bodies were recovered in Baghdad, including both Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods, said al-Mohammedawi.

They included four men shot in the head execution-style and hanged from electricity pylons in Sadr City, where two car bombs and four mortar rounds shattered shops and market stalls at nightfall Sunday, as residents shopped for food for their evening meals.

Scores of frightened Shiite families have fled predominantly Sunni parts of Baghdad in recent weeks, some of them at gunpoint. More than 100 families arrived between Monday and Tuesday alone in Wasit province, in the southern Shiite heartland, said Haitham Ajaimi Manie, an official with the provisional migration directorate. More than 300 Baghdad families are now sheltering in the province, he said.

North of the capital, a roadside bomb exploded Tuesday among Shiite pilgrims headed on foot to the holy city Karbala, killing one person and injuring seven near Baqouba, police said.

Have a nice day.

posted by Wink @ 8:55 AM