Iraq's Interior Ministry has opened an investigation into claims a police death squad has been operating in Iraq.
Iraq's deputy interior minister in charge of domestic intelligence, said the investigation was launched following US military claims that soldiers had detained 22 men wearing police uniforms who were about to kill a Sunni Arab man.
A US general said American forces had found evidence of a death squad operating in Iraq's Interior Ministry.
The US commander of the civilian police training teams in Iraq said the 22 men were employed by the Interior Ministry as highway patrol officers.
The bodies of Sunni Arabs, bound and gagged and shot in the head, have been turning up in Baghdad for months, fuelling allegations of sectarian killings, which Sunni Arab leaders say often are carried out by Shias in army or police uniforms.
Police found the bodies of 10 more men who had been shot dead, execution-style, and dumped in three different areas of Baghdad's predominantly Shia suburb of Shula.
AP