Iraq Violence Continues

Death squads continued to sweep through the Iraqi capital, leaving behind a grisly trail of at least 22 bodies Thursday, some of them handcuffed and decapitated. At least 19 people were killed or found dead in other violence throughout the country, including five U.S. soldiers whose deaths were reported Thursday.

A U.S. military spokesman acknowledged that despite a major operation to combat death squads and curb sectarian violence between Shiite and Sunni Arab paramilitary fighters in Baghdad, violence had increased.

“There was a spike in violence that did occur in the city over the last 24 hours,” Army Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV told reporters. “And a large portion of those ... are from murder, execution-style-type activity.”

The grim toll came one day after the discovery of 60 bodies in Baghdad’s streets and dozens of other slayings in and around the capital.

Caldwell, however, said that areas such as the troubled Dora district in south Baghdad had seen major improvements in security. “If you go down to the Dora area ... where they’ve focused the operations and continue to operate today, you can walk very freely through that area,” he said.

But nearly half of the corpses found in Baghdad on Thursday had been dumped on Dora’s outskirts. All of those victims wore handcuffs and had torture marks and bullet holes where they had been shot at close range, Iraqi police Capt. Mohammed Hanoon said.

In other violence, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden truck near an electrical substation on Baghdad’s western outskirts, killing two U.S. soldiers. The concussion and shrapnel from the blast injured 25 other soldiers even though the explosion occurred outside thick concrete blast walls, U.S. Army spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said.

It wasn’t immediately clear why the soldiers were at the substation, or whether the bombing had any effect on the power supply in Baghdad.

The military reported that two other soldiers had died in the capital on Thursday; one was shot to death in southeast Baghdad and another was killed by a roadside bomb.

And a U.S. soldier in the northern city of Mosul was shot Wednesday and died after being taken to a military hospital, a military statement said.

Also Thursday, a car bomb in southeast Baghdad killed nine people, including two Iraqi policemen, and injured 29 other people. Interior Ministry officials also reported that two worshipers were killed when gunmen attacked a mosque with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades.

In the northern city of Tall Afar, about 40 miles west of Mosul, a man detonated an explosives vest near a checkpoint, killing one man and injuring three other people.

In the northern oil hub of Kirkuk, gunmen killed a tribal sheik and local councilman named Abdullah Khalaf Azzawi and his son as they were driving home.

The U.S. military also announced a flurry of anti-guerrilla activity in the western province of Al Anbar, a haven for foreign insurgent fighters. Caldwell said U.S. and Iraqi forces had killed 66 suspected insurgents and arrested 830 others this month.

Witnesses said U.S. Marines raided a funeral 20 miles west of Ramadi, where Sunni Arab-led insurgents and U.S. troops have battled for months. After the burial ceremony, U.S. forces arrested at least 60 men at the gathering.

Caldwell also announced that U.S. and Iraqi troops had conducted 25 raids in and around Baghdad, capturing 70 suspected insurgents, including an associate of Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub Masri.

Caldwell did not release the name of the detainee.

solomon.moore@latimes.com