127 killed as violence flares

By Jay Deshmukh in Baghdad
February 24, 2006

Alert ... an Iraqi soldier inspects the scene of a bomb attack. MEN have killed at least 127 people in Iraq in sectarian violence that flared after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine and reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques, officials say.

GUN Amid warnings that sectarian violence could spiral further out of control, Iraqi political leaders went into an emergency meeting with President Jalal Talabani.
The bloodshed is likely to complicate the task of Shiite and Sunni political leaders who have pledged to set up a government of national unity in the wake of the December elections which illustrated a deep sectarian split in Iraq.

Eighty bullet-ridden corpses were brought to the Baghdad morgue, the deputy director of the morgue, Doctor Kais Mohammed, said.

"I've only been able to carry out autopsies on 25 of them," he said, adding that all had been shot. The bodies, which had been dumped in Baghdad and its suburbs, could not immediately be identified.

Another 47 bodies of men shot to death were discovered along with 10 burnt-out cars alongside a road near Nahrawan, southeast of Baghdad, police said.

The corpses were found near a brick factory and it was not immediately known if the victims were workers from the factory.

Iraq has already placed its security forces on high alert and cancelled all leave. The upsurge in killings came after suspected al-Qaeda linked militants bombed the 1000-year-old Imam Ali al-Hadi mausoleum, one of the countries' main Shiite shrines, in the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad.

Police also reported finding the bodies of three Iraqi journalists working for Dubai-based Arabiya satellite television who were kidnapped near Samarra last night while reporting on the shrine bombing.

"The bodies of the presenter Atwar Bahjat, of cameraman Adnan Abdallah and of soundman Khaled Mohsen were found early this morning some 15km north of Samarra," police said.

In other violence, at least 12 people were killed in a powerful roadside bomb attack in Baquba, 60km northeast of Baghdad, of which eight were Iraqi army soldiers and four other civilians, police said, adding 20 others were wounded.

The shrine bombing prompted global condemnation and appeals for calm, but large-scale demonstrations turned violent with attacks on dozens of Sunni mosques nationwide.

One Sunni was also killed and two wounded in a drive by shooting outside a Sunni mosque in Baquba, police said.

Yesterday, at least six Sunnis were killed in sectarian attacks in Baghdad where one Sunni mosque was set ablaze and others fired upon.

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Roadside bomb kills four US soldiers

Four US soldiers were killed in the Iraqi town of Hawija when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb, the US military said.

A military statement said the soldiers were on patrol in the town north of Baghdad.

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