BAGHDAD, 16 September 2006 — More than 100 bullet-riddled corpses have been recovered from the streets of Baghdad over the past three days, officials said yesterday, amid a sharp spike in sectarian violence in Iraq.
Pointing the finger at Shiite death squads, Iraq’s top Sunni leader Adnan Al-Dulaimi said that “well-known militias” were behind the communal bloodletting that he warned was propelling the country toward “disaster.”
The United Nations has also warned that Iraq could slide into civil war as the daily bloodshed shows no signs of abating despite political efforts for national reconciliation.
In the past three days, security forces have collected bodies of more than 100 people killed in Shiite-Sunni violence, the epicenter of which is Baghdad. US and Iraqi security officials say most were shot dead execution-style with bullet to their heads and many showed signs of torture.
Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Abdel Karim Khalaf told AFP that 51 bodies had been recovered in Baghdad in the past 24 hours. He said some of them had been killed in “criminal activities.”
On Thursday, police reported finding 20 corpses and on Wednesday 64 bodies were registered by the capital’s morgues. “A large portion of those is murder, execution-style type activity. It is associated with sectarian violence,” US military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told reporters on Thursday.
The violence in Baghdad has surged despite a massive security crackdown — Operation Together Forward — by US and Iraqi forces since mid-June. Sunni Arab leaders have regularly charged that the sectarian killings are carried out by militias linked to Shiite political parties who dominate the Parliament.
Dulaimi alleged on Thursday that “well known militias” were carrying out the killings, referring to armed groups close to Moqtada Al-Sadr and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
“If strong measures are not taken soon, the country is going toward disaster and no one would be saved,” said Dulaimi, a lawmaker and head of the National Concord Front, Iraq’s largest Sunni parliamentary bloc. “These well-known militias are pushing the country to the edge of catastrophe,” he said.
