September 13, 2006 - 6:04 AM


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A total of 60 unidentified bodies have been found in various parts of Baghdad over the past 24 hours, an Interior Ministry source said on Wednesday.

The unusually high 24-hour tally was recorded despite a month-old security crackdown in Iraq's capital by U.S. and Iraqi troops.

The source said most bodies were bound and shot in the head and many bore signs of torture -- trademarks of sectarian death squads and kidnap gangs plaguing the capital.

The United Nations estimated two months ago about 100 people a day were being killed in Iraq in sectarian bloodshed between the country's majority Shi'ite Muslims and minority Sunni Arabs.

U.S. military commanders have said the increased presence of troops on the streets, sweeping through violent neighbourhoods to prepare them for Iraqi police control, had reduced the "murder rate" by more than 40 percent in August.

That figure covered individual shootings but not bigger attacks such as bombings.

Last week, the U.N. office in Baghdad said the number of unidentified bodies taken to the city morgue in August fell by 17 percent to 1,536 from a record figure in July.

Morgue officials, who have stopped giving data to the media, say about 90 percent of the bodies they see are victims of violence.

More than one in four Iraqis live in Baghdad.

Sectarian killings in the capital have created waves of refugees, fleeing homes in neighbourhoods where they feel in a minority and hardening a divide along the Tigris river between mainly Sunni west Baghdad and the mainly Shi'ite east.

Iraq's four-month-old coalition government is pursuing a "national reconciliation plan" to try to avert an all-out civil war.

Reuters (IDS)