Police find 30 bodies scattered around Baghdad as sectarian killings surge

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Police found 30 bodies bearing signs of torture Friday, the latest in a wave of sectarian killings sweeping the Iraqi capital despite a monthlong security operation.

A U.S. Marine was killed Friday in Anbar province, and an American soldier was killed Thursday evening by a roadside bomb northwest of Baghdad, the military said. The soldier was the fifth to have died on Thursday, making it a particularly bloody day for U.S. forces.

In central Baghdad, a gunman opened fire from the top of an abandoned building in a Sunni Arab neighborhood, killing an Iraqi civilian and wounding five others, said police Lt. Ahmed Mohammed Ali.

Violence has intensified over the past two days, with more than 130 people either killed by attacks or their bodies found dumped in the streets of Baghdad. All the bodies found Friday had signs of torture, and one that washed up on the banks of the Tigris River had been dismembered.

A spokesman for a prominent Sunni Arab political party was shot and killed by gunmen, said a party official who did not want to be identified because he fears for his life.

Sheik Muhanad al-Gharairi was a spokesman for the Conference of People of Iraq, a Sunni Arab party headed by Adnan al-Dulaimi. He was also an imam at a mosque in Baghdad and was on his way to conduct prayers at a different mosque in Garma, 19 miles outside of Baghdad when he was killed.

Both the U.S. government and military have said sectarian killings and violence are surging around Iraq, although the military said attacks have been limited to parts of Baghdad not yet included in a security offensive that began on Aug. 7.

On Thursday, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, told the Security Council that Iraq's sectarian killings and kidnappings had increased in the last three months, along with a rise in the number of displaced people.

He said ethnic and sectarian violence was "one of the most significant threats to security and stability in Iraq." The average number of weekly attacks increased 15 percent in the last three months, and Iraqi casualties rose by 51 percent, Bolton said.

Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the U.S. command's spokesman, said the violence had intensified in areas that have not been reached by Operation Together Forward, a security sweep involving 12,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers.

"The terrorists and death squads are clearly targeting civilians outside of the focus areas," Caldwell said Thursday.