The bodies of 40 men who were shot and had their hands and feet bound have been found in Baghdad over the past 24 hours, police said Thursday. All the victims showed signs of torture, police Lt. Thayer Mahmoud said, according to the AP. They were dumped in several neighborhoods in both eastern and western Baghdad, he said.
Also Thursday, two Iraqi soldiers died and 10 others were injured in suicide car bombing in part of Baghdad where American and Iraqi troops had just conducted a security sweep.
The car slammed into a checkpoint in the northeastern neighborhood of Shaab, a neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad that had just been cleared by troops taking part in Operation Together Forward.
On Wednesday, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, claimed violence in the capital had spiked with the onset of the holy month of Ramadan, which started on Monday, and that suicide attacks were at their highest level ever. "This has been a tough week," he said.
In other violence, a child was killed in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora when a mortar shell landed on a house, police said.
