Baghdad, June 23. (AP): At least 25 people have been executed gangland-style in Iraq's third-largest city this week, with residents gunned down in ones and twos and bodies found scattered throughout Mosul.
Elsewhere, five US troops were killed in operations south and west of Baghdad, US military said yesterday, and the police stormed a farm and freed 17 victims of a factory kidnapping.
Mosul, 362 kms northwest of Baghdad, has a mixed Kurdish and Sunni Arab population and a tradition of bad blood. The Kurds, who are largely Sunni Muslim but not Arab, have formed a prosperous autonomous region nearby after decades of oppression and mass killings under the Sunni Arab minority that ran Iraq until Saddam Hussein was ousted three years ago.
The police said they were not sure if the attacks were carried out by the Sunni Arab-led insurgency, common criminals or sectarian death squads. Increasing numbers of Iraqi deaths over the past months have been attributed to revenge killings carried out by Shiite-backed militia organisations or Sunni Arabs who have banded together in retribution.
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200606231430.htm
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