Police found the bodies of 15 men in an abandoned minibus yesterday morning, as Iraqi leaders, under heavy pressure from Washington, began intensive talks to form a national unity government.
The discovery brought the total number of corpses recovered in the past 24 hours to at least 55, the Interior Ministry said.
The latest victims had their hands and feet bound, and were shot in the head and chest, said Major Falah al-Mohammedawi, an official with the ministry that oversees police.
The minibus was found at about 9:45am on the main road between Amariyah and Ghazaliyah, two notorious, mostly Sunni west Baghdad neighborhoods -- not far from where a minibus containing 18 bodies was discovered last week.
The bodies of a least 40 more men were found discarded in various parts of the capital in the past 24 hours, al-Mohammedawi said. All had been shot and many were also bound hand and foot.
The bodies were found in both Sunni and Shiite areas, many of them among Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhoods, the major said.
The dumping of bodies tortured and killed execution-style has long been a feature of Iraq's violence, but the number of such incidents has risen sharply since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite mosque sparked a wave of sectarian reprisals.
The grim finds underscored fears that Sunday's deadly explosions in a Shiite slum would unleash a new round of sectarian killing between Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims and minority Sunnis.
A number of the bodies -- including four strung-up from electricity pylons -- were discovered in Sadr City where car bombs and mortar fire killed at least 58 people and injured more than 200 on Sunday. Al-Mohammedawi did not specify how many.
The killings came as Iraqi politicians started talks to form a broad-based government, widely seen as the best chance of bringing stability to Iraq, but participants played down the chance of any breakthrough.
"We are not optimistic at all. There will be no result out of this meeting, just preliminary discussion on the speaker, president and prime minister posts," said a senior source in the Sunni Accordance Front, the main Sunni political grouping.
"Nobody is willing to compromise," he added.
In Washington, US President George W. Bush said insurgents were trying to ignite a civil war by escalating violence.
"I wish I could tell you that the violence is waning and that the road ahead will be smooth," Bush said in a speech at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies at George Washington University.
"It will not. There will be more tough fighting and more days of struggle, and we will see more images of chaos and carnage in the days and months to come," Bush said.
Meanwhile, Britain announced a 10 percent -- about 800-troop -- reduction by May.
"This is a significant reduction which is based largely on the ability of the Iraqis themselves to participate and defend themselves against terrorism, but there is a long, long way to go," British Defense Secretary John Reid said on Monday.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS