US National Intelligence Director John Negroponte met today with the Iraqi prime minister, in the second visit this week by a top US official amid spiralling violence that included seven American deaths and the discovery of 56 bodies bearing signs of torture.
The bodies found scattered around the Iraqi capital were of men between 20 and 45 years old, and all were apparent victims of sectarian death squads, police said.
All wore civilian clothes and had been bound at the wrists and ankles, a police spokesman said. He said the bodies showed signs of having been tortured, a common practice among religious extremists who seize victims from private homes or from cars and buses travelling the capital's dangerous streets.
Volunteers pray today over bodies before a mass burial in Kerbala, south of Baghdad.
Such murders almost always go unsolved and police said they had no solid information on the victims' identities or their killers.
Shia militiamen have been blamed for many of Baghdad's sectarian slayings, which exploded in number following the February bombing of an important Shia shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra.
Violence against Iraqis has grown unabated in the past month, with more than 1,300 killed since October 1st.
Apparently fearing still more bloodshed after Sunday's expected announcement of a verdict in the trial of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Iraq's defence minister has cancelled leave for all soldiers.
Defence Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi was heard issuing the order in a video of a meeting between Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and senior military and security officials, in which Mr Maliki upbraided them for failing to stop the capital's unbridled violence.
"All vacations will be cancelled and all those who are on vacation must return," Mr al-Obeidi said.
The US military announced the deaths of three soldiers in Baghdad and four Marines in the western province of Anbar, an insurgent stronghold.
A brief statement said the three soldiers died yesterday when the vehicle they were in was struck by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad. It gave no other details.
The deaths raised the American toll for November to 11.
The unannounced visit of Mr Negroponte comes five days after the arrival of National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, who flew to Baghdad after the Iraqi leadership issued a series of bitter complaints about US tactics in the country.
Mr Maliki met with Mr Negroponte in the Iraqi leader's office in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, according to the prime minister's spokesman.
The spokesman, Yassin Majid, said the visit was part "of a continuing series of meetings between the Iraqi government and the US administration". He did not elaborate.
Relations between the United States and the Iraqi government have been strained in recent days after Mr Maliki issued a series of bitter complaints, at one point saying he was not "America's man in Iraq."