Iraqi police yesterday announced the discovery of six more bodies in Baghdad, most of them tortured before being executed, raising the spectre of sectarian violence.
The grim find came a day after police said 20 decomposed cadavers had been unearthed outside the capital and as Iraq and France celebrated the release of a French journalist and her Iraqi fixer after a five-month hostage ordeal.
Three bodies, including those of two tortured policemen brothers, were found in eastern Baghdad, police said yesterday, and another three unidentified, blindfolded and tortured bodies in the north of the capital.
PHOTO: AFP
Police said on Sunday they had found the decomposed bodies of 20 executed men near Nahrawan, southeast of the capital, who had also been tortured before dying.
The discovery led Iraq's main Sunni clerical organization, the Committee of Muslim Scholars, to claim the dead were Sunni civilians, after charging last month that a former Shiite militia had carried out tit-for-tat killings of Sunnis.
Shiites have been a regular target of the relentless Sunni insurgency that killed almost 700 people last month. The Committee accused a Shiite militia of killing Sunnis, amid a spate of attacks between the two communities, including some targeting religious leaders.
"It is the Badr Organization which is responsible for these killings. I take responsibility for what I am saying," said Committee spokesman Hareth al-Dhari.
The Badr Organization replaced the officially disbanded militia of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of two leading political parties in the United Iraqi Alliance, which now dominates the government.
US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick warned at the time that insurgents "are trying to split the society through sectarian killings."
Iraq's Shiites are struggling to bring the disempowered Sunni minority into the political process after it largely boycotted January's elections, including the drawing up of the country's new constitution.
Attacks and clashes north of the capital late Sunday and early yesterday killed 11 members of Iraqi security forces, while another soldier's body was discovered in a river and a businessman was shot dead as he left a US base in Dhuluiyah.
As former French hostage Florence Aubenas enjoyed her first day of rest after five months held hostage in Iraq, her co-captive and fixer Hussein Hanun recovered from his ordeal with his family in Baghdad.
Aubenas, a writer for the center-left daily Liberation, and Hanun were released on Saturday after being taken hostage in Baghdad on Jan. 5.
On her arrival in France, Aubenas told reporters she had been kept in "severe" conditions in a basement, with her hands and ankles bound and a blindfold over her eyes almost all the time.
French authorities did not give any details on the circumstances of her release, but denied a ransom had been paid.
According to Serge July, the chief editor of Liberation, the release was "a fairly complicated military operation" because the kidnappers drove around Baghdad for some time to make sure they could drop the two off with impunity. French authorities did not identify the hostage-takers.
The EU hailed the release, and called on "the different groups in Iraq to free all remaining hostages in captivity and pursue their goals through the political process and not through violence and intimidation."
There are believed to be more than 20 foreign hostages still in Iraq, including citizens of Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Japan, Jordan, the Philippines, Turkey and the US. Many more Iraqis have been abducted.
In Washington, a senator warned the US will "have to face" a painful dilemma on restoring the military draft as the rising casualties result in persistent shortfalls in US army recruitment.
Joseph Biden, the top Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made the prediction after new data released by the Pentagon showed the US army failing to meet its recruitment targets for four straight months.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS