Death squads claim more victims in Iraq

IRAQ: While world attention focuses on events in Lebanon and Israel, violence in Iraq continues to escalate. Twenty employees of the religious trust which cares for Sunni mosques, schools and shrines were kidnapped yesterday and at least 22 people were killed in a series of bombings and shootings in the capital and at other flashpoints.

Among the fatalities was Gen Fakhir Abdul-Hussein Ali, senior legal adviser to the interior ministry. Sixteen victims of execution by sectarian death squads were discovered at various locations around Iraq.

The religious trust announced that it was suspending operations, thereby ending supervision and maintenance work at the thousands of Sunni religious sites throughout Iraq. Both Sunni and Shia mosques are routine targets of suicide-bombers and gun attacks.

South of Baghdad there were clashes between gunmen and Iraqi security forces between Youssifiya and Mahmoudiya, towns astride the route to the Shia holy city of Najaf, where Shias take their dead for burial. Tribesmen are now being drawn into the conflict in this area.

Oil-rich Kirkuk, 300km north of the capital, was also the scene of bombings, intensifying ethno-sectarian tensions in a city divided three ways between Arabs, Turkomen and Kurds.

The kidnappings and killings came a day after a bomber killed 59 people near a Shia shrine in Kufa, just north of Najaf. On Monday, 50 people were killed at Mahmoudiya.

The surge in violence has undermined the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki, inaugurated on May 20th. Last month he put forward a security plan for Baghdad and deployed 40,000 US troops and Iraqi soldiers and police to impose order. But instead of reducing violence, his plan seems to have emboldened insurgents and sectarian gunmen to step up attacks with the aim of bringing down the government and discrediting the US.

The UN Assistance Mission in Iraq has reported that 2,669 civilians were killed in May and 3,149 in June. By comparison, the toll for January was between 710 and 1,000.

Estimates are generally low because many deaths are not reported. Common targets are teachers, judges, religious leaders and doctors. Tens of thousands are fleeing the carnage, many with no intention of returning.

One Iraqi businessman said he was emigrating to Canada with his wife and two university-age sons because he sees no hope for Iraq for the next 10 years.

The UN report blamed the rise in the toll on "collusion between criminal gangs, militias and sectarian 'hit groups', alleged [ interior ministry] death squads, vigilante groups and religious extremists".

Meanwhile, Turkish officials have indicated that they could deploy their army in northern Iraq if US and Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga militiamen fail to stop Turkish Kurdish fighters from using the area as a base for strikes on Turkey.

Ankara has come under increasing domestic pressure to take action after 15 Turkish troops, police and border guards were killed in fighting with Kurdish insurgents in the south-east of Turkey.

Adopting the rubric of Washington's "war on terror" and Israel's war on Palestinian and Lebanese guerrillas, Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, confirmed that plans were being put in place for an offensive when he stated: "We know how to take care of [ terrorists] on our own . . . Our planners are making preparations and will continue to do so."

Turkey regards its rebellious Kurds as "terrorists" and refuses to negotiate with them. Turkey is also determined to intervene, if necessary, to defend the Turkomen community of Kirkuk, where Kurds are seeking to transform the city's demography by means of "ethnic cleansing" before annexing it to the Kurdish region.