Pakistani and Indian Pilgrims murdered in Iraq

Iraq police have found this morning the tortured and blindfolded bodies of 13 Pakistani and Indian pilgrims and their Iraqi driver.

The country’s most influential Shiite cleric has warned the prime minister to quell violence or risk "other powers'' filling the gap,

In the latest violence, police said yesterday that the group of pilgrims - 11 Pakistanis, including five women, and two Indians - and their Iraqi driver were ambushed and killed on their way to the Shiite holy city of Karbala.

The bodies, blindfolded and with hands and feet bound, all bore signs of torture, an official at Karbala morgue said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said the 14 had been dead for three days and their bodies had been found on Friday.

Shiite pilgrims are to observe Shaaban, a mid-month religious celebration, on September 9.

Pakistan yesterday condemned the killings and urged its citizens to postpone travel to Iraq.

At least 15 violent deaths were reported elsewhere in Iraq yesterday, while the government announced it had formally taken over the notorious Abu Ghraib prison from coalition authorities.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf,the cleric's office said.

In July, al-Sistani was credited with restraining the Shiite community from widespread retaliation against minority Sunnis following horrific attacks on Shiite civilians.

"If the government does not do its duty in imposing security and order to the people and protecting them, it will give a chance to other powers to do this duty and this a very dangerous matter,'' al-Sistani's office quoted him as saying.

The meeting came two days after a barrage of co-ordinated attacks across mainly Shiite eastern Baghdad killed 64 people and wounded 286. The prime minister's office said in a statement that 17 suspects had been arrested after the bombings, but gave no further details.

Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed in violence this week, despite a massive security operation in the capital involving an extra 12,000 Iraqi and US troops that has targeted some of Baghdad's most problematic neighbourhoods.

In Washington, a day after a Pentagon report described spreading sectarian violence, US President George Bush painted a rosier picture.

"Our commanders and diplomats on the ground believe that Iraq has not descended into a civil war,'' Bush said in a radio address, although he acknowledged ``a bloody campaign of sectarian violence'' and the ``difficult and dangerous'' work of trying to end it.

Authorities, meanwhile, cancelled a highly anticipated ceremony in which Iraq's Defence Ministry was to assume operational control of the country's armed forces command from the US-led coalition. No new date was set for the event.