more muslim atrocities on themselves:
20 Decapitated Bodies Found Near Baghdad
Ali Al-Saadi/AFP -- Getty Images
The aftermath of the explosion at a busy intersection in the mostly Shiite Bayaa district in Baghdad today.
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By ALISSA J. RUBIN and JON ELSEN
Published: June 28, 2007
BAGHDAD, June 28 — Twenty decapitated bodies were found today in a predominantly Sunni village southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi police said.
The grisly discovery was made on a bloody day across Iraq. A car bomb killed 25 people and wounded 40 others in a busy intersection in the mostly Shiite Bayaa district in Baghdad today. And the casualty count from an attack on Wednesday in Kadhimiya, another Shiite neighborhood, rose to 10 dead and 17 wounded.
In Basra, a roadside bomb killed three British soldiers and wounded another, Reuters reported.
Iraqi police said the decapitated bodies had not yet been identified. Some of the victims’ heads were also found near the bodies, along with identification documents for two of them. The victims were of different ages and were clothed, police said.
The corpses were removed by American troops and Iraq police and taken to the main morgue in Baghdad.
The latest car bombings in Baghdad came as American and Iraqi forces continued a major push north of the city to find and destroy factories where the car bombs are being made.
“We are still working to reduce the car bombs,” Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said today. “We’d love to be able to prevent their introduction into the cities. This operation has only been going on for 13 days, and we’re not in a position yet to completely prevent it from happening.”
The American military recently found and dismantled a large car bomb factory in the Mosul area.
Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric and militia leader, said today that he plans to go ahead with a mass march to a mosque that was destroyed by bombings in the town of Samarra, but he said his goal is not to confront Sunnis along the way or to displace Sunnis in Samarra. Rather, he said, the purpose of the march is to bring Shiites and Sunnis closer together.
The bombing today in the Bayaa district struck during the morning rush hour at an intersection where minibuses pick up and drop off passengers. The area has been a frequent target of car bombs attributed to Al Qaeda, according to Reuters.
On Wednesday, an American soldier died in a predominantly Shiite area of eastern Baghdad when a roadside bomb detonated and damaged his vehicle. Four soldiers with him were wounded in the blast. On Tuesday, a marine died in Anbar Province of combat-related injuries, the military said in a statement today.
Scattered violence occurred Wednesday in Baghdad. Twenty-one bodies were found, and a roadside bomb killed a policeman. Another roadside bomb killed three people in a market area of northern Baghdad.
In Sadr City, a vast Shiite neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad, the military and Iraqi civilians offered markedly different accounts of a lethal encounter involving American soldiers. An American military report said that American military police officers saw what they suspected was a suicide car bomber trying to enter the place where the police officers were delivering a generator. They raised their weapons, and the suspect tried to flee. Then four or five men in the area opened fire, and the military police returned fire, killing one of the gunmen.
Iraqis in the neighborhood, however, said the American soldiers killed five civilians after two families had an argument and one family came after the other with guns. As two groups of men drove back to their homes, they ran into an American convoy, a relative of one of the men said. The American troops thought the men were members of the Shiite militia linked to Mr. Sadr and began shooting. Three of the men were killed, and two civilians, a man and a woman, died in the cross-fire.
In the Adhamiya neighborhood, which has been gripped by insurgent violence and has been closed off for six days, the gates were opened so people could come and go. But American soldiers used loudspeakers to warn of dire consequences for residents if any of their patrols were attacked.
In Adhamiya and other violent areas, American forces are trying to prod residents to turn against the insurgents. However, residents often fear reprisals from insurgents if they show any sign of breaking from them. The area is patrolled jointly by Iraqi and American forces.
“We basically don’t know who is setting up the bombs, but I think it is the foreigners and not from the area,” said Falih Abdul-Rahman, 55, an electrician. “The Iraqi Army destroys the area and tortures its people without any reason. I hope that Adhamiya will not be the victim.”
Violence appeared to be increasing in northern Iraq, one of the areas to which extremist insurgents are believed to have fled when American soldiers began an offensive against them in Diyala Province 10 days ago. In Kirkuk, the police arrested 10 gunmen from Diyala, said Col. Anwar Abdullah of the Iraqi police. He said the men had carried forged documents and printed material referring to the Islamic State of Iraq, another name for the militant group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
In Mosul, a journalist for the Nenawa newspaper was killed, the second journalist to be fatally shot in the past three days in the city. Three other people were killed in attacks in Mosul, an official in the Interior Ministry said.
Violence struck Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb as a police patrol was passing, killing four policemen and wounding three others, said a member of the Samarra Police Department. The police responded with a barrage of bullets that killed two civilians and wounded three others, the policeman said.
North of Samarra, a skirmish occurred early on Wednesday morning between gunmen attempting to load a truck with explosives and the local police. Fourteen of the gunmen were killed and three wounded, the police in Shirqat said.
Qais Mizher contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed from Baghdad, Najaf, Kut, Hilla, Kirkuk, Mosul, Sadr City, Salahuddin and Samarra.
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