60 bodies found in Baghdad in 24 hours

Baghdad: A total of 60 unidentified bodies have been found in various parts of Baghdad over the past 24 hours, an Interior Ministry source said on Wednesday.

The source said most bodies were bound and shot in the head and many bore signs of torture - trademarks of sectarian death squads and kidnap gangs plaguing the capital.

Two car bombs targeting police killed 22 people during the morning rush hour on Wednesday and wounded another 76 people. The first killed 14 outside Baghdad's traffic police headquarters, a second targeted police guarding an electricity station in the east of the city.

The death of another US soldier was confirmed in Anbar province. The soldier died on Monday from wounds sustained due to enemy action while operating in Anbar province. A US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb which blasted his vehicle late on Tuesday south of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.

The United Nations estimated two months ago about 100 people a day were being killed in Iraq in sectarian bloodshed between the country's majority Shiite Muslims and minority Sunni Arabs.

US military commanders have said the increased presence of troops on the streets, sweeping through violent neighborhoods to prepare them for Iraqi police control, had reduced the "murder rate" by more than 40 per cent in August.

That figure covered individual shootings but not bigger attacks such as bombings.

Last week, the UN office in Baghdad said the number of unidentified bodies taken to the city morgue in August fell by 17 per cent to 1,536 from a record figure in July.

Morgue officials, who have stopped giving data to the media, say about 90 per cent of the bodies they see are victims of violence.

More than one in four Iraqis live in Baghdad.

Sectarian killings in the capital have created waves of refugees, fleeing homes in neighbourhoods where they feel in a minority and hardening a divide along the Tigris river between mainly Sunni west Baghdad and the mainly Shiite east.

Iraq's four-month-old coalition government is pursuing a "national reconciliation plan" to try to avert an all-out civil war.