4/20/2005 3:41:00 PM GMT
More than 50 bodies were found in the Tigris River south of the Iraqi capital on Wednesday, while twenty others were discovered in the town of Haditha, northwest of Baghdad.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told reporters on Wednesday that "More than 50 bodies have been brought out from the Tigris and we have the full name of those who were killed and those criminals who committed these crimes,"
The bodies are believed to be those of the Shiite Muslims held hostage by rebels in the Iraqi town of Madain, 30 km southeast of Baghdad.
Talabani said that the rebels killed the hostages and “threw the bodies into the Tigris,"
Some Iraqi officials said last week that gunmen kidnapped more than 100 Shiites in Maidan.
Iraqi forces raided the town but found nothing.
Residents also dismissed the hostage-taking reports, and a senior member of the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, Abd al-Salam al-Kubaisi, said that the reports were fabricated by the Iraqi government as an excuse to raid the town and crack down on the town’s Sunnis.
Elsewhere, the bodies of 19 men were found in a soccer stadium in a town 140 miles northwest of Baghdad.
A Taxi driver, identified as Usama Rauf, reported that he heard gunshots, and rushed to the stadium where he saw the bodies lined up against a bloodstained wall.
Witnesses counted nineteen bodies, and said that all appeared to have been shot dead.
They said that the victims, dressed in civilian clothes, were Iraqi National Guardsmen who were kidnapped on their way home for the holiday Thursday marking the birthday of Prophet Mohamed.
No military identification documents were found near the bodies, and it was not possible to immediately verify their claim.
U.S. and Iraqi army officials had no immediate comment on the incident.
Also Wednesday, a car bomb exploded near a U.S. convoy in western Baghdad, killing more than two Iraqis, including one child, and wounding at least five others, said Hussam Abdulrazaq, an official at the nearby al-Yarmouk Hospital.
Another bomb exploded in a parking area near a police station in Baghdad’s southern district of al-Doura, wounding four people, said police Lt. Hassan Falah. Twenty cars were also destroyed in the blast.
In another attack, a nearby police patrol was hit by a third explosion. Three Iraqi civilians were injured.
In Sadr city, unknown attackers shot dead policeman Ali Talib as he walked toward his car, said Col. Hussein Abdulwahid.
In another section of eastern Baghdad, rebels attacked a Health Ministry car, killing its driver and injuring one passenger, said police Col. Hassan Jaloub.