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Action on militias urged

On yet another day when dozens are killed in Iraq's capital, a Sunni leader calls on the Shiite-led government to disarm the insurgents.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 14, 2006

BAGHDAD - The leader of Iraq's biggest Sunni Arab group demanded Wednesday that the beleaguered Shiite-led government take steps to disarm militias after police said the bodies of 65 men were dumped in and around Baghdad.

On a violent day even by Baghdad's standards, car bombs, mortars and other attacks also killed at least 39 people and wounded dozens. Two U.S. soldiers also were killed, one in enemy action in restive Anbar province on Monday and the other in a roadside bombing south of Baghdad on Tuesday, the U.S. military command said.

The attacks have been unrelenting despite a security crackdown around the capital by 12,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops. More than 1,500 violent deaths last month at the height of the joint operation speak to the difficulties in restoring any semblance of security to this city of 6-million people.

Although Sunni Arabs operate some death squads, the vast majority are run by Shiite militias and gangs.

Shiite political groups, including those in power, say that the armed militias have nothing to do with them and that their own military wings were disarmed months ago and turned into social and humanitarian groups. They say armed groups and militias are "rogue" elements beyond their control, but many Sunni Arabs contend that they are controlled by Shiite politicians and clerics.

Adnan al-Dulaimi, a Sunni who heads the Iraqi Accordance Front political party, called on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, to take a first step by honoring a pledge to disband militias.

His party is Iraq's largest Sunni Arab political bloc and holds 44 seats in the 275-member Parliament.

It is believed that some Shiite parties with militias accused of involvement in sectarian killings have support from neighboring Iran. Those parties are also allied with Maliki's government.

Maliki, on a visit to Iran on Wednesday, pressed Tehran to stop interference that is having a "negative" effect on his country, Ali al-Dabbagh, his spokesman, said in an unusual criticism of an ally with which Baghdad's ties are getting closer.

Police said 60 of the bodies were found overnight around Baghdad, with the majority dumped in predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhoods.

All the bodies were bound, bore signs of torture and had been shot, police said. Such killings are often the work of death squads who kidnap people and torture them with power drills or beat them, before executing them with a bullet to the head.

The U.S. military said that it could not confirm all the executions and that their body count so far was lower than that reported by police.

In the two bloodiest attacks in the capital, a car bombing killed at least 19 people and wounded more than 62 in a large square used mostly as a parking lot near the main headquarters of Baghdad's traffic police department.

In eastern Baghdad, a bomb in a parked car exploded next to an Iraqi police patrol in the Zayona neighborhood, killing at least 12 people and wounding 34. The Iraqi army thwarted what could have been a far deadlier attack by disarming a car rigged with 2,000 pounds of dynamite in central Baghdad, the U.S. command said.

Also Wednesday, the trial of Saddam Hussein continued, with Chief Judge Abdullah al-Amiri brushing aside prosecution demands to step down for letting the ousted president make political statements, as more witnesses told of chemical attacks against Kurds.

Hussein and six others have been accused of genocide and other offenses in connection with a 1987-88 campaign to suppress a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq.

[Last modified September 14, 2006, 01:09:26]