Police around Iraq's capital found the corpses of 13 men today with gunshot wounds to their heads, as other attacks in the country killed at least 24, authorities said.
Officers found eight corpses dumped in farmland in the Sunni-dominated Arab Jabour district, a police officer said. All of the dead, men believed to be between the ages of 25 to 35, suffered gunshot to their heads, he said.
Arab Jabour, a former insurgent stronghold, is located about 25 kilometres south of Baghdad.
Authorities found another five corpses in a vacant lot in a residential area of the capital's northwestern Shula neighbourhood, the officer said. The slain men, all in their 30s, had their hands and legs tied and suffered gunshots in heads and chests, he said. Officers found no identification on the corpses.
The discovery of corpses is a grim reminder of Iraq's sectarian warfare in 2006 and 2007, when both Shiite and Sunni death squads used to roam the streets and raid homes to round up people. Authorities later found the victims' corpses mutilated and left on the street.
Meanwhile, gunmen armed with silencer-fitted pistols broke into the house of a Sunni family in the predominantly Shiite northern Hurriyah neighbourhood today in northern Baghdad, killing the parents, two sons and a daughter, a police officer said. A motive for the attack wasn't immediately clear.
A bomb exploded in a commercial district of Baghdad's southern Dora neighbourhood, killing two civilians and wounding five, authorities said. Three mortar rounds also landed in a street in the southwestern Albu Eitha neighbourhood, killing two and wounding five, police said. Gunmen also killed a civilian and wounded three when they opened fire on a crowd in the southeastern Bayaa neighbourhood, officials said.
Outside of Baghdad, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a checkpoint manned by the Kurdish security forces known as peshmerga in the town of Khanaqin, killing three and wounding 12, another police officer said. Khanaqinis 140 kilometres northeast of Baghdad.
Another suicide bomber set off his explosives-laden belt at the gate of a police station in the town of Habbaniyah, allowing another to enter and blow himself up inside the building, a police officer said. The blast killed five police officers and wounded eight, he said.
