BAGHDAD, 18 October 2006 — Iraq’s beleaguered government struggled to assert its battered authority yesterday, purging the police force and sending troops into a town reeling from a four-day sectarian bloodbath. The US military said Iraqi and American troops were restoring order in the town of Balad and the killing fields around, a region convulsed by the random slaughter of civilians by rival Sunni and Shiite death squads.

“The violence began when 19 Shia were kidnapped and killed on Friday in Al-Dhuluiyah, east of Balad. The following day, more than 38 Sunnis were killed in retaliation,” the US military said in a statement. “The city has been hit with five indirect fire attacks, killing six civilians and wounding 10,” it added, referring to mortar fire. Malik Laftah, the head of Balad city council, told AFP many corpses were still lying in the streets and that 17 mortar shells had hit the city limits Tuesday, indicating the final toll could be higher.

“No one dares to move around and the Mahdi Army is controlling the town,” he said, referring to the powerful militia loyal to the radical Shiite leader Moqtada Al-Sadr, which has been accused of taking part in the attacks. The coalition insisted, however, that US and Iraqi government forces were now in control, having decreed a vehicle curfew and set up checkpoints to prevent Shiite and Sunni gangs from continuing the slaughter.

“We continue to conduct our normal patrols in the city and provide support for Iraqi security forces as they lead operations in stopping the sectarian violence in Balad,” said US army Lieutenant Colonel Jeffery Martindale. Martindale also, however, confirmed that two Iraqi police officers had been arrested for taking part in the massacre, which triggered the orgy of violence.

Iraqi police are often accused of collaborating with illegal militia, and yesterday the Interior Ministry announced that it was to reorganize the force. Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Abdel Karim Khalaf told reporters that 1,228 officers had been sacked for breaking the law while nearly 2,000 more were purged from the ranks for dereliction of duty.

“This restructuring was applied this week to the leadership of the National Police,” Khalaf said. “The headquarters of two divisions were dissolved and all brigades were brought directly under the commander of the National Police.” The National Police was hastily thrown together to address security shortages and is notorious for being infiltrated by the very Shiite militias which US commanders now say are the biggest threat to Iraq’s stability.

Iraq’s National Police is being completely reorganized and over 3,000 officers have been dismissed, the Interior Ministry spokesman said yesterday. Brig. Gen. Abdel Karim Khalaf told reporters at a press conference in the heavily fortified Green Zone that 1,228 had been sacked for breaking the law while nearly 2,000 more were dismissed for dereliction of duty. “This restructuring was applied this week to the leadership of the National Police,” Khalaf said. “The headquarters of the two divisions were dissolved and all brigades were brought directly under the commander of the National Police.”

The National Police, which was formed out of the police commandos and the public order brigades, was hastily thrown together in 2004 to address security shortages and became notoriously infiltrated by militias. “A total of 1,228 have been dismissed on orders of the interior minister for criminal acts and forgery and human rights violations and other issues,” Khalaf said.

In another development, Saddam Hussein yesterday accused witnesses at his genocide trial of undermining the unity of the country, as more Kurds told of how scores of detained civilians died in his brutal prisons. Mutalib Mohammed Salman, a 78-year-old man in traditional Kurdish headdress, had testified that he and fellow villagers were rounded up during the 1988 “Anfal” campaign and shipped off to a desert prison in southern Iraq.

“One day I counted 20 dead bodies as I went over to see two of my relatives in the prison after I heard that they were sick,” he told the court in Kurdish. “When I reached them, I found them dead.” The next witness, an even more elderly Kurdish farmer, related how at least 700 of the 7,000 prisoners in the grim jail died while he was there. “They were given each one loaf and a half of bread and they were bringing the water from the marshlands,” said 81-year-old Omar Hassan Omar.

Saddam, who was overthrown in a US-led invasion in 2003, has been charged with genocide for ordering an Anfal, which prosecutors have branded a brutish pogrom against Iraq’s Kurdish minority which left 182,000 dead.