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.
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
Japan is to downgrade its description of ties with China from “one of its most important” in an annual diplomatic report, according to a draft reviewed by Reuters, as relations with Beijing worsen. This year’s Diplomatic Bluebook, which Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government is expected to approve next month, would instead describe China as an important neighbor and the relationship as “strategic” and “mutually beneficial.” The draft cites a series of confrontations with Beijing over the past year, including export controls on rare earths, radar lock-ons targeting Japanese military aircraft and increased pressure around Taiwan. The shift in tone underscores a deterioration
LAW CONSTRAINTS: The US has been pressing allies to send warships to open the Strait, but Tokyo’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution Japan could consider deploying its military for minesweeping in the Strait of Hormuz if a ceasefire is reached in the war on Iran, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Toshimitsu Motegi said yesterday. “If there were to be a complete ceasefire, hypothetically speaking, then things like minesweeping could come up,” Motegi said. “This is purely hypothetical, but if a ceasefire were established and naval mines were creating an obstacle, then I think that would be something to consider.” Japan’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution, but 2015 security legislation allows Tokyo to use its Self-Defense Forces overseas if an attack,
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) yesterday faced a regional election battle in Rhineland-Palatinate, now held by the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Merz’s CDU has enjoyed a narrow poll lead over the SPD — their coalition partners at the national level — who have ruled the mid-sized state for 35 years. Polling third is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which spells a greater threat to the two centrist parties in several state elections in September in the country’s ex-communist east. The picturesque state of Rhineland-Palatinate, bordering France, Belgium and Luxembourg and with a population of about 4 million,
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