Police find 60 bodies in Baghdad

BAGHDAD—Iraqi police found 60 bodies dumped across Baghdad in the 24 hours until Tuesday morning, the apparent victims of sectarian death squads blamed for escalating violence that threatens to pitch the country into civil war.
A bomb placed under a car outside a bakery in the mostly Sunni southern Baghdad district of Doura exploded at midday, reducing the shop to rubble and killing 10 people, many who had been queuing outside to buy bread, police said.
Iraq has been gripped by Sunni-Shi'ite bloodletting since the bombing of a revered Shi'ite shrine in February. The United Nations estimates 100 Iraqis die violently every day.
The violence continues largely unchecked despite U.S. efforts to build up Iraq's fledgling security forces, a major security crackdown in the capital and a series of peace plans by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's four-month-old government.
Most of the 60 bodies, victims of the deaths squads who roam Baghdad torturing and killing at will, had been shot in the head execution-style, an Interior Ministry official told Reuters.
In the most high-profile killing in recent weeks, gunmen in camouflage uniform on Monday shot dead the brother of Iraq's Sunni Vice President, Tareq al-Hashemi. He was the third of Hashemi's siblings to be killed since April.
U.S. officials had predicted a surge in violence during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began in late September, and U.S. military spokesman Major General William Caldwell said on Monday the trend would likely continue for the next two weeks.
"It is clearly tough at the moment," he said in Baghdad.
Maliki's government is under growing pressure, particularly from Washington, to rein in the militias, several of which are tied to parties within his own government and are accused of infiltrating the police to provide cover for killings.
In a bid to ease the violence and bridge mistrust, Maliki has announced a plan to form committees in Baghdad districts that would include representatives of political parties, religious leaders and military and police officials.
An all-party committee overseeing the plan will discuss proposals for joint checkpoints in Sunni and Shi'ite districts on Tuesday night, a senior government official told Reuters.
In the flashpoint southern Shi'ite city of Diwaniya, U.S. and Iraqi troops killed 11 militants, many dressed as Iraqi police, in clashes around a mosque on Monday night, the U.S. military said in a statement on Tuesday.
The military said the fighting erupted after militants opened fire on a routine joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol, but a senior representative of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the city said the troops had been trying to arrest him.
"They shot at us. One of my guards has two or three grenades and the other has a machinegun. They returned fire and set fire to one of the Humvees. We then withdrew peacefully, thanks God," Khudair al-Ansari told Reuters.
The fighting follows fierce street battles in the city. The U.S. military said 30 militants were killed and a U.S. tank severely damaged when U.S. and Iraqi troops entered Diwaniya on Sunday to detain a "high-value target."
The 60 bodies found in Baghdad were all men, some of whom had been blindfolded or bound, said the Interior Ministry official, who did not want to be named. Signs of torture included bruising, often a sign of beating, and broken limbs.
"The signs of torture shows they were killed for sectarian or political motives," the official said.—Agencies