Iraq: 38 tortured bodies found

[Janice]

Five hostages released, including two Iraqi football players

Thursday, July 20, 2006; Posted: 7:38 a.m. EDT (11:38 GMT)


BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi police found 38 tortured bodies and witnessed the slow release of five hostages amidst general violence throughout Baghdad Thursday.

Iraqi police recovered the 38 bodies showing signs of torture in the capital city during a 24-hour period ending Thursday morning.

Five of 30 people kidnapped five days ago by gunmen dressed in army uniforms were slowly released over the past few days in central Baghdad, Iraqi police said Thursday.

The five released included two Iraqi football players, police said. No information on the other members of the kidnapped group -- including the head of Iraq's Olympic Committee, Ahmad el Kijiye -- was reported.

At least three people were killed and 10 others wounded Thursday when a car bomb exploded on a busy central Baghdad street, Iraqi emergency police said.

An Iraqi army convoy traveling in the western Baghdad neighborhood al-Jamia was also bombed by insurgents, police said. Police cordoned off the area and have not released a casualty report.

The new violence came after the U.N. special representative for Iraq urged Iraqis to find a way to stop the killings in the war-torn country, calling them a "national tragedy."

Ashraf Qazi was speaking on Wednesday the day after the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq issued a report saying more than 14,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq this year, and that more than 5,800 deaths occurred in May and June alone.

"The emerging phenomenon of Iraqis killing Iraqis on a daily basis is nothing less than a catastrophe and a national tragedy for the people of Iraq," Qazi said.

He also urged citizens to cooperate with the legal authorities and urged restraint by multinational and Iraqi security forces to avert civilian casualties.

Qazi said ending the "spiraling violence" must be Iraqis' "immediate and overriding priority." And, he said, they must focus on the root causes of it.

But as he spoke assaults and kidnappings continued to rage across the country. A wave of assaults in Baghdad and Kirkuk on Wednesday killed at least 19 people, including a senior Interior Ministry employee and a family of four at a grocery store. A U.S. Marine death, as a result of a non-hostile incident on Tuesday, was also reported.

Also Wednesday, kidnappers abducted more than 20 members of the agency that cares for Sunni religious sites nationwide. And police found 10 bodies dumped in the capital.

Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, addressed recent days of violence -- including the recent targeting of dozens of civilians at a day laborer gathering spot in a Kufa marketplace, at a marketplace in Mahmoudiya and at a cafe in Tuz Khurmato. He said the fact that al Qaeda in Iraq has resorted to hitting soft targets shows its weaknesses.

He also said the national reconciliation plan that he unveiled recently is the "only bridge and the basic crossing to the shores of peace." A government committee will meet on Saturday to begin working on the plan, which al-Maliki said the insurgency wants to undermine.

Meanwhile, the widespread "killings, kidnappings and torture" cited by the U.N. report remained on full display on Wednesday. (U.N.: 14,000 Iraqis killed in 2006)

Around 5 p.m., an Iraqi died and two others were wounded when two mortars landed inside Baghdad's Green Zone, a limited-access area in the center of Baghdad, is where U.S. and Iraqi government offices are located.

In southern Baghdad, attackers stormed a grocery store in the New Baghdad neighborhood, where they shot and killed four members of a family that owned the store. Then, they detonated an explosive where civilians were gathering, killing three people and wounding seven others.

Maj. Gen. Fakhrou Abdul Mohsen was gunned down when he was leaving his house in what emergency police called a drive-by shooting.

A car bomb, followed by two other blasts, killed five Iraqis -- including three police officers -- near the Technology University in southeast Baghdad, police said.

Five people were killed in two incidents in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk -- two civilians were killed and 12 others wounded outside a cafe near the courthouse and a suicide car bomb targeting police killed three people and wounded six others.

Police told CNN that 10 slain, unidentified bodies were found across Baghdad on Wednesday.

The dumping of slain bodies -- many with signs of torture -- has been a common occurrence in the capital and elsewhere since Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence escalated after the Feb. 22 bombing of the Askariya Mosque, a Shiite shrine in Samarra.

More than 20 employees of the Sunni Endowment were kidnapped on Wednesday, a spokesman for the group said. Mehdi Mashhadani said the incident took place when the people were leaving their offices in Baghdad and heading home to Taji, north of the capital. The agency manages for Sunni mosques and shrines across the country.