IRAQ: Gunmen dressed as Iraqi police commandos killed nine people in an attack on an electronics store in Baghdad yesterday, the latest in a series of raids targeting lucrative businesses in the capital.
Witnesses said the workers, including women, were rounded up and killed. Bodies lay on the bloodstained footpath, with blood dripping from the lower parts of the walls of the two- storey home that housed the business.
"They shouted 'God is Greatest', then rounded up the women, the workers," said neighbour Muayad Marouf. "I was watching from the window and then they shot them dead."
As well as a rise in sectarian killings, there has also been a spate of attacks and robberies by uniformed raiders on stores, money-changers and other businesses this week.
On Monday and Tuesday, 35 people were abducted in four attacks, including two on electronics dealers and one on a money-changer, where the attackers also stole $50,000.
The fate of those victims is unknown. The dead in yesterday's attack, in the affluent Mansour district of western Baghdad, included three women.
About 30 to 40 bodies, many shot in the head and showing signs of torture, are being found on the streets of the capital every day, morgue officials say.
Sectarian violence has surged since the bombing of a Shia shrine in Samarra last month and tensions were raised further by a joint raid by US and Iraqi forces on a Shia Muslim compound in Baghdad on Sunday which killed at least 16 people.
The US military defended the raid but said on Tuesday for the first time that part of the complex could be called a mosque. The US had insisted no mosque was entered or damaged during the operation, despite accusations by Shia leaders that troops killed worshippers inside the Mustafa mosque.
Iraq's political leaders had been due to hold their latest round of talks on forging a government of national unity embracing Shias, Sunnis and Kurds, but they were postponed due to haggling over a Sunni demand for a veto on security issues.
Another contentious point is that Sunni and Kurdish groups have asked the dominant Shia Alliance to settle the issue of a prime minister as soon as possible, political sources said.
Since the Alliance's Ibrahim al- Jaafari has already been chosen, this is seen as code that they are seeking to remove him.
As Iraq struggles to keep the lid on violence, interior minister Bayan Jabor, a focus for complaints about sectarian death squads within the police, pledged to continue cleansing the ministry's ranks, but he said it would take time.
"I have suffered over these 10 months, fighting terrorism and cleaning up the ministry," he said, adding that ethnic and sectarian sensitivities were big obstacles.
While violence is rising, US casualties appear to be down. Two US soldiers were shot in separate incidents yesterday, bringing US deaths for the month so far to 28, one of the lowest figures in about two years.