Monday 13th June, 2005

Twenty eight bodies of executed men found in Iraq   

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Big News Network.com     Monday 13th June, 2005    

Iraqi police have uncovered the bodies of 28 people in shallow graves or dumped on the streets of Baghdad. A spokesman Lt. Ayad Othman said a shepherd found the buried bodies of 20 men on Friday in the Nahrawan desert, 16 miles (25 kilometres) east of the capital Baghdad. "All were blindfolded and their hands were tied behind their backs and shot from behind," Othman told The Associated Press. CNN said some of the men showed signs of torture. It is not known when the men died. Witnesses claimed the slain men were Sunnis, according to a statement from the influential Sunni organization, the Association of Muslim Scholars. No details were provided to support the claim. The bodies of eight men shot in the head were found Sunday in two different locations in Baghdad's predominatly Shiite northern suburb of Shula, police Capt. Majed Abdul Aziz said. The bodies could not immediately be identified. "The interior minister keeps saying security is getting better, but everyday we hear of 20 bodies killed here and other 20 bodies found there," said Salih al-Mutlak, head of the prominent umbrella Sunni body, the National Dialogue Council. The grisly discoveries were announced two days after 21 men were found slain Friday near Qaim, on the lawless Syrian frontier about 200 miles west of Baghdad. It was feared the bodies may have been those of Iraqi soldiers who went missing Wednesday after leaving their base in Akashat, a remote village near Qaim, in a bus bound for Baghdad. Last month, multiple batches of bodies turned up in various locations across Iraq. Many were apparent revenge killings that have raised fears of sectarian civil war. Despite the violence, there were several positive developments Sunday, The Associated Press report said. The French journalist Florence Aubenas and her Iraqi assistant Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi were freed Saturday after five months in captivity. Aubenas left Baghdad at noon Sunday on a French government plane in the middle of a sandstorm that had closed the capital's international airport for two days. Al-Saadi received a hero's welcome — hugs and kisses from more than 60 relatives and friends at his southern Baghdad home. A band of trumpets played Arab tunes and a sheep was slaughtered to celebrate his homecoming. In northern Iraq, the 111-member Kurdish Parliament unanimously elected veteran guerrilla leader Massoud Barzani to be the first president of Iraq's northern Kurdistan region, prompting horn-honking celebrations by supporters. Barzani will also lead the estimated 100,000 member Kurdish Peshmerga militia. Some 2,000 soccer fans tried to ignore the violence and watched two of Iraq's elite teams play at Baghdad's biggest sports complex, the 50,000-capacity Shaab Stadium. It reopened to the public Sunday after it was commandeered two years ago for a U.S. military base. Zawraa, an ancient name for Baghdad, beat Shurta, Arabic for police, 2-0 in a game that many spectators feared could be marred by a mortar attack or bombing. "We were terrified at the beginning, but when the game started we had the chance to forget about the attacks, the bombs and the violence for a little while," Shurta fan Ghazi Faisal, a police major, told AP. "For once there was some joy."