Baghdad police find 65 bodies in 24 hour
(AP)
Updated: 2006-03-14 18:15

Police found at least 65 bodies in Baghdad in the past 24 hours, including 15 men bound and shot in an abandoned minibus, in a gruesome wave of apparent sectarian reprisal attacks, officials said Tuesday.

An Iraqi policeman inspects a damaged armored SUV of an unidentified security convoy after the explosion of a car bomb, near the Green Zone, in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, March 13, 2006. Police found four hanged men dangling from electricity pylons in a Baghdad Shiite slum Monday. Bomb blasts in Baghdad and north of the capital many of them targeting Iraqi police patrols killed at least 11 more people and wounded more than 40, police said. [AP]

The timing of the killings appeared related to the car bomb and mortar attacks in the Shiite slum of Sadr City in east Baghdad on Sunday in which 58 people died and more than 200 were wounded.

The sectarian violence marked the second wave of mass killings in Iraq since Feb. 22, when bombers destroyed an important Shiite Muslim shrine in Samarra, north of the capital.