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Nearly 100 people were killed or found dead in the Iraqi capital over the past 24 hours, authorities said yesterday, continuing a wave of sectarian violence that has defied American efforts to thwart the carnage.
Sixty-two bullet-riddled corpses -- all bearing signs of torture; some of them beheaded -- were found dumped in streets throughout the city since Tuesday night, said Brigadier General Abdullah Mahmood of the Interior Ministry. Bombings and mortar attacks on Iraqi police killed 27 other people yesterday morning. In the deadliest attack, a car bomb exploded at 9 a.m. near an indoor stadium in Baghdad, killing 12 traffic policemen and wounding 13, Mahmood said. As a crowd swarmed the scene to aid the wounded, another bomb suddenly went off, killing seven civilians and injuring 47. Five mortar shells slammed into a police station in the Mashtal area of eastern Baghdad and a security forces recruiting center near an airfield in the central part of the capital, the Interior Ministry said. Seven people were killed and 19 were wounded. The American military, meanwhile, announced the deaths of two soldiers, one killed south of Baghdad Tuesday night after his vehicle was struck by a bomb, and the other on Monday during combat in al-Anbar province. As the violence flared, leaders of the country's main political parties met to seek agreement on a politically explosive plan to carve the country into a federation of three autonomous regions. The federalism plan would create a Shi'ite region in southern Iraq much like the autonomous zone in the north controlled by the Kurds. Sunnis would be left with vast swaths of desert in the country's middle, which lacks the oil reserves in the other regions. Khalaf Olayan, leader of the National Dialogue Front, a Sunni group, said the meeting ``focused on the question of time limitations and how we could delay the matter for the time being." ``We believe that a majority of our people do not understand federalism and some believe that if approved it would lead to the division of the country," he said. ``Besides, people now need services first and want things that will help them in their daily lives." The leaders of all the political blocs will meet again Saturday to try to resolve the issue, he said. In Tehran, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki continued his first state visit to Iran by meeting with the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who called on the American military to withdraw from Iraq. ``Once the foreign forces leave Iraq, many of its problems will be solved," Khamenei said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. At the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan said yesterday that Middle East leaders told him during a recent tour of the region that the US invasion of Iraq has ``been a real disaster for them. They believe that it has destabilized the region." Annan said there were sharp divisions over an extended US military presence in Iraq.
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