Police find 30 beheaded bodies

Police and soldiers responding to a report of killings today found 30 bodies, most beheaded, near a village north of Baghdad.

Authorities reported no immediate information on the identities of the victims or who may have been responsible the suspected sectarian killings.

The dead were being transferred to a morgue in Baghdad, said police 1st Lieutenant Thaer Mahmoud.

Brigadier Saman Talabani, an Iraqi army commander, had said earlier the presence of the corpses was reported by residents in Mullah Eid, a village near the town of Buhriz, a former stronghold of ex-President Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party about 35 miles north of Baghdad.

Talabani said he had sent a battalion of soldiers to join a team from Diyala hospital to deal with the reported victims.

Iraq has seen an explosion of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, including such secretive killings, since the February 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, a predominantly Sunni city, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

The Sunnis who dominate the area north of Baghdad were fervent supporters of Saddam, whose Sunni-led regime ruled Iraq for decades and brutally oppressed majority Shiite Muslims and minority Kurds.