The bodies of at least 80 people apparently killed in sectarian attacks have been found in Baghdad since yesterday, after more than 50 people died in multiple car bombs in a Shi'ite militia stronghold.
The bodies, many of them bound and bearing signs of torture, included 29 found by a group of children playing soccer, and 15 strangled men left in an abandoned vehicle, police said.
The unusually high number of bodies for a short period came to light as Iraqi leaders, under strong pressure from Washington, failed to make a breakthrough today in coalition talks aimed at halting the slide towards civil war.
Following the February 22 bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra that led to days of bloodshed, officials expressed fears that another large-scale attack could set off all-out sectarian conflict between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunnis.
On Sunday, car bombs ripped through crowded markets in Baghdad's eastern district of Sadr City, a stronghold of the radical Shi'ite cleric and militia leader, Moqtada al-Sadr.
Many Sunnis had accused Sadr's Mehdi Army militia of being behind most of the reprisals against Sunni homes and mosques after the Samarra bomb.
Sadr, a rising kingmaker in the ruling Shi'ite Alliance, urged his followers on Monday not to retaliate for the car bombs and has denied running death squads.
The dumping of bodies tortured and killed execution-style has long been a feature of Iraq's violence.
The number of such incidents has risen sharply since the Samarra bombing, raising fears that the Shi'ite majority is abandoning the restraint it has shown in the past two years, in spite of appeals from clerics.
Police said they dug up 29 unidentified bodies, most of them in their underwear and with gunshot wounds, in the Kamaliya district in southeast Baghdad after a group of children playing soccer smelled the corpses.
"Some children were playing soccer and they smelled something strong and the police were notified. They were buried in one large pit," said a police official.
Some appeared to have been tortured and killed in the past few days, police said, adding they had been shot, gagged and bound -- typical of victims of sectarian violence.
Others appeared to have been killed about a week to 10 days ago, police said. Two other corpses were found nearby, he said.
Earlier, police found the bodies of 15 people bound and strangled in a vehicle in mainly Sunni western Baghdad.
In addition, Baghdad hospitals received the bodies of 40 people killed in separate incidents in Baghdad in the 24 hours since early Monday. A hospital source said all had been shot.