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.
IDENTITY: A sex extortion scandal involving Thai monks has deeply shaken public trust in the clergy, with 11 monks implicated in financial misconduct Reverence for the saffron-robed Buddhist monkhood is deeply woven into Thai society, but a sex extortion scandal has besmirched the clergy and left the devout questioning their faith. Thai police this week arrested a woman accused of bedding at least 11 monks in breach of their vows of celibacy, before blackmailing them with thousands of secretly taken photos of their trysts. The monks are said to have paid nearly US$12 million, funneled out of their monasteries, funded by donations from laypeople hoping to increase their merit and prospects for reincarnation. The scandal provoked outrage over hypocrisy in the monkhood, concern that their status
The United States Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday it plans to adopt rules to bar companies from connecting undersea submarine communication cables to the US that include Chinese technology or equipment. “We have seen submarine cable infrastructure threatened in recent years by foreign adversaries, like China,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a statement. “We are therefore taking action here to guard our submarine cables against foreign adversary ownership, and access as well as cyber and physical threats.” The United States has for years expressed concerns about China’s role in handling network traffic and the potential for espionage. The U.S. has
A disillusioned Japanese electorate feeling the economic pinch goes to the polls today, as a right-wing party promoting a “Japanese first” agenda gains popularity, with fears over foreigners becoming a major election issue. Birthed on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic, spreading conspiracy theories about vaccinations and a cabal of global elites, the Sanseito Party has widened its appeal ahead of today’s upper house vote — railing against immigration and dragging rhetoric that was once confined to Japan’s political fringes into the mainstream. Polls show the party might only secure 10 to 15 of the 125 seats up for grabs, but it is
The US Department of Education on Tuesday said it opened a foreign funding investigation into the University of Michigan (UM) while alleging it found “inaccurate and incomplete disclosures” in a review of the university’s foreign reports, after two Chinese scientists linked to the school were separately charged with smuggling biological materials into the US. As part of the investigation, the department asked the university to share, within 30 days, tax records related to foreign funding, a list of foreign gifts, grants and contracts with any foreign source, and other documents, the department said in a statement and in a letter to