Cops massacred Sunni Arabs
2007-03-29 17:23
Mosul - Iraq's embattled government admitted on Thursday that police were behind the vengeful slaughter of at least 70 Sunni Arabs in a northern town as more bodies of men, killed execution-style, were found.
A doctor in Tal Afar, the site of Iraq's worst sectarian bloodshed in recent months, said bodies of five shot men were brought to hospital by Iraqi soldiers on Thursday.
Interior minister Jawad Bolani, an independent Shi'ite in the Shi'ite-dominated government, confirmed the perpetrators of Tuesday's killings were policemen, of whom an overwhelming majority are Shi'ites.
"We will take legal action against a group of them. An order has been issued by the prime minister (Nuri al-Maliki) to investigate the violations caused by elements of the police in Tal Afar," said Bolani.
An Iraqi army source speaking on condition of anonymity said 13 policemen had been detained for the mass killings of Sunni Arabs in the town on Tuesday.
But later an Iraqi military spokesperson in Mosul said the detained policemen were released as many of them had lost relatives in the truck bombing which had killed 85 people the same day prior to the brutal rampage.
'Harrowing tales'
"We released them on the undertaking that they will be questioned later. The decision was taken because of their psychological state," he said without giving his name.
Gunmen went on a bloody rampage through the town's Sunni district of al-Wahada after a presumed Sunni suicide bomber blew up a truck in a crowded Shi'ite district.
Survivors told harrowing tales of gunmen dragging men out of their homes, handcuffing and blindfolding them, before spraying gunfire at random leaving dead pensioners, fathers, sons and teenagers.
"They broke into our house wearing both police uniforms and plain clothes. They killed my husband and killed by son. Then they sprayed me with bullets. I was shot in the leg," said Umm Abdul Sattar from a hospital in Mosul.
Maliki has ordered a full investigation into the bombing and shootings but his investigative team of interior and defence ministries' officials had not reached the town yet.
Local doctors confirmed 70 Sunni men were shot dead with a bullet in the head on Tuesday. They said another 40 people were missing and a further 30 - mostly women - wounded.
Iraq's leading Sunni religious organisation blamed government security forces for the massacre.
'Corpses shipped to Mosul'
"A force from the interior ministry's sectarian militia committed a new communal massacre against innocent civilians," said the Muslim Scholars Association in Baghdad.
Two lorries crammed with the bodies of more than 50 of the shooting victims were moved to a hospital in Mosul, along with two ambulances ferrying women wounded in the rampage, said doctors.
A doctor travelling in the convoy said the corpses were shipped to Mosul to get death certificates. He accused hospital authorities in Tal Afar of refusing to provide adequate certification.
- AFP