International   

Sectarian violence rocks Iraq

Baghdad: Suspected Shia militiamen killed at least 46 Sunni Arabs in a weekend rampage of revenge killing in a city north of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said on Sunday, raising the toll in the latest sectarian bloodletting there to 63.

A string of bombings in the northern city of Kirkuk killed 10 persons, including two girls who died when a man detonated explosives strapped to his body in front of a girls high school in downtown Kirkuk, police officials said.

The sectarian killings on Saturday and Sunday in Balad, 80 km north of Baghdad, were in apparent retaliation for the slayings of 17 Shias, whose decapitated bodies were found in an orchard on the town's outskirts on Friday. Extra police flooded into the city and a curfew was imposed, said the Interior Ministry. Additional security measures were taken in other villages in the predominantly Sunni area, a hotbed of the militancy battling U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Nevertheless, the killings raged through the night, with bullet-ridden bodies being delivered to the Balad's main hospital into Sunday morning, according to a hospital director who asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisals.

3 U.S. soldiers killed

Three American soldiers were killed in bomb attack in south of Baghdad on Saturday, the U.S. military said in a statement on Sunday. The soldiers were patrolling an area south of Baghdad when an improvised explosive-device hit their vehicle, said the statement.

— AP, Xinhua

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Divisions over curbs
E.U. calls for restraint
Nepal peace talks adjourned
Veil triggers row in U.K.
Sectarian violence rocks Iraq
For that weightless feel
Peace accord signed
A security breach
Journalist kidnapped
Grand pageantry showcases India
China release for Kalam's book

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu