PHOTO: Iraqi women grieve over a dead child under a blanket at a hospital after a mortar attack in Baghdad February 27, 2006. Mortar fire killed 15 people and shooting erupted around two Baghdad mosques on Sunday but pleas for unity and a third day of curfew in the city seemed to dampen sectarian violence that has pitched Iraq toward civil war. REUTERS/Namir Noor-Eldeen
Toll in Iraq's Deadly Surge: 1,300
Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week's bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad's main morgue. The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S. military and the news media.
Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday Monday -- blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their heads. Many of the bodies were sprawled with their hands still bound -- and many of them had wound up at the morgue after what their families said was their abduction by the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Aides to Sadr denied the allegations, calling them part of a smear campaign by unspecified political rivals.
By Monday, violence between Sunni Arabs and Shiites appeared to have eased. The disclosure of the death tolls followed accusations by the U.S. military and later Iraqi officials that the news media had exaggerated the violence between Shiites and Sunnis over the past few days. The bulk of the previously known deaths were caused by bombings and other large-scale attacks. But the scene at the morgue and accounts related by relatives indicated that most of the bloodletting came at the hands of self-styled executioners.
Violence in Iraq-from Monday and Tuesday (Sure does not look like it has calmed down to me. These are from Reuters Alertnet.)
NAHRAWAN - Interior Ministry police commandos killed five suspected Sunni insurgents and captured 25 in an evening battle near Nakhrawan just southeast of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said. Eight police were also killed and six wounded.
BAGHDAD - Iraqi Interior Ministry forces have captured a senior aide to al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, state television said on Monday. Iraqiya television named the man as Abu Farouq and said he was captured with five others in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of the capital.
ISKANDARIYA - Two insurgents were killed and another wounded while they were trying to plant a bomb which exploded prematurely in the main road between Iskandariya and Latifiya, south of Baghdad, police said.
RIYADH - Three civilians were killed when a roadside bomb exploded in Riyadh town, 60 km (40 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, police said.
BAGHDAD - A mortar attack killed four people and wounded 17 in Shola, a Shi'ite district in Sunni-dominated western Baghdad on Monday, police said.
BAQUBA - Gunmen shot dead the owner of a glaziers and an employee and wounded five others in Baquba, 60 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
KERBALA - Iraqi police arrested three suspects while they were planting bombs near a Shiite Shrine of al-Hur al-Riyahi near Kerbala, 110 km (68 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.
FALLUJA - A civilian was killed by Iraqi soldiers while he was heading to work in Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.
TUZ KHUMATO - Iraqi police arrested 16 suspects on Saturday and Sunday in Tuz Khurmato, 70 km south of Kirkuk, and Dibis, 40 km (25 miles) northwest of Kirkuk, police said. Two of them were arrested while they were trying to plant bombs near a Shi'ite mosque, police added.
TUZ KHURMATO - The head of the education directorate escaped an assassination attempt when gunmen threw a hand grenade at his office in Tuz Khurmato, police said.
BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was killed by small-arms fire on Sunday in central Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement.
BAGHDAD - Jawad al-Samara'i, a member of Iraq's student union who was abducted on Saturday by gunmen in the northeastern Hurriya district of the capital, was found dead with several marks of torture, the union said.
TIKRIT - The mosque over the grace of Saddam Hussein'a father was badly damaged by a bomb, police and officials said.
BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was killed by small-arms fire west of Baghdad on Monday, the U.S. military said.
BAQUBA - Nine bodies of shooting victims were found just south of the city of Baquba on Tuesday, the army said. The corpses were found in wastelands in the hamlet of Tarfaya, the officials said.
BAGHDAD - Interior Ministry sources said that a Sunni Arab mosque was damaged by a bomb early Tuesday morning.
May God forgive Mr. Bush for the evil he has unleashed on these poor people.
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