Sombody has been reading ARFCOM.
www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49260REBUILDING IN THE GULF
Mass murder:
87 in 24 hours
Gruesome Baghdad finds
tied to Sunni-Shiite strife
Posted: March 14, 2006
12:19 p.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Iraqi authorities have discovered at least 87 bodies in the past 24 hours from two mass killings believed to be motivated by sectarian strife between Sunni and Shia extremists.
In Baghdad's Khadra district – a mainly Sunni neighborhood – the bodies of 15 bound and apparently tortured men were left in an abandoned vehicle, BBC News reported.
Another 27 bound and blindfolded bodies were found hours later buried in a mass grave in an empty field in a south-eastern suburb of the capital.
Interior ministry spokesman Maj. Falah Mohammedawi said the men in Khadra had been shot in the head and chest and showed signs of torture. More than 40 other bodies have been found in areas around Baghdad, he said, including four men reportedly strung up from electricity pylons in the eastern Shia district of Sadr City.
Hundreds of people have been killed in response to a Feb. 22 bomb attack on the Shia shrine at Samarra, the famed golden dome. On Sunday, 50 people were killed and 90 injured in bomb attacks on markets in Sadr City. Yesterday, radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr said his militia would not respond to attacks though he believes Iraq is in a civil war.
With the inaugural session of parliament set for Thursday, leaders of Iraq's main ethnic and religious groups have been meeting, under pressure from the U.S. ambassador, to unblock political negotiations.
A major sticking point has been Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's candidacy for a second term. Kurdish, Sunni and some secular leaders say he's done little to contain reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques in the wake of the attack on the Shiite shrine.
President Bush, meanwhile, accused insurgents of trying to ignite a civil war.
"I wish I could tell you that the violence is waning and that the road ahead will be smooth," the president 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."
Britain, however, announced it will bring home 800 troops by May, a 10 percent reduction, reflecting its confidence in the country's progress.
"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 in London.