Dozens more bodies found in Iraqi capital

Baghdad, Sept 15: The bound bodies of dozens more torture victims were found in Baghdad in the past day, officials said today, fuelling anarchic sectarian passions as political leaders square off over an issue some say could mean civil war.

In all, police retrieved 49 bodies in the past 24 hours till Friday morning, most shot in the head after being trussed and tortured, a senior Interior Ministry official told sources. That took the body count in the city for three days, by his tally, to 129.

The US military acknowledged a ''spike'' in the murder rate this week, despite a month-old security crackdown in the capital for which Washington sent in thousands of extra troops.

Six US soldiers were killed yesterday, four around Baghdad, including two in a suicide car bomb attack that also wounded 25 Americans.

At Baghdad police headquarters, one officer said he had a tally of 20 bodies reported in the past day, compared with 32 yesterday and 60 on Wednesday -- the latter a figure that made headlines and drew renewed international attention to violence the United Nations estimates may be killing 100 Iraqis a day.

The Interior Ministry tallies for the previous two days were 60 and 20, the senior official said.

''It's barbaric but sadly we've become used to it,'' he said of bodies found around the capital, in both Sunni and Shi'ite areas.

''Forty bodies, 60 bodies, it's become a daily routine.'' Though some of the violence is the work of criminal gangs taking advantage of the anarchy to make money from kidnapping and extortion, political leaders on either side of the sectarian divide blame militants on the other for ''death squad'' killings.

PARLIAMENT SHOWDOWN

Parliamentary leaders are due to meet tomorrow to try to break a deadlock over proposed legislation to grant sweeping autonomy to new regions within a federal state structure. Shi'ites are set on introducing a bill on Tuesday to define the mechanisms of the federalism laid out in the US-sponsored constitution. Many want to create a big, autonomous region in the oil-rich south, similar to that run by the ethnic Kurds in the north, who broke from Saddam Hussein's Iraq 16 years ago.

But Saddam's Sunni Arab minority in the centre are threatening to boycott parliament and want instead to amend the constitution to ensure that central government prevails. They fear regional autonomy could mean Shi'ite and Kurdish control of Iraq's oil and say it would lead to the country breaking up.

Adding to the pressure, the constitution ratified last year in a referendum despite strong Sunni objections sets deadlines both for passing enabling legislation on setting up federal regions and for reviewing and maybe amending the constitution.

The Sunnis want amendments before discussing legislation.

Shi'ite leaders want a bill passed by an October. 22 deadline that would create mechanisms for setting up new autonomous regions. It is not clear what happens if the deadlines pass without result.

Some Shi'ite factions, notably that of fiery young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, are cooler on federalism and might ally with sceptical Sunnis to block legislation. Meetings in the next few days and Tuesday's parliamentary session may clarify the issue.

Yesterday's car bomb attack on the US troops west of Baghdad scattered debris into a ''concentrated troop area'', the military said in a statement. Local residents said they heard a loud blast near a police station used as a base by US troops.

All but four of the wounded were ''not seriously'' injured.

US and Iraqi officials also said they had killed one senior figure from al Qaeda's Iraq branch and captured another.

The escalating violence has piled political pressure on US President George W Bush, facing congressional elections in November.

Bush has said in a series of speeches that success in Iraq is key to a global struggle against Islamic militants.

REUTERS

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