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BAGHDAD - Baghdad police recovered the bodies of 46 people around the city in the 24 hours to Monday evening local time (Tuesday morning NZT), one of the highest tolls of suspected sectarian death squad victims in recent weeks, an Interior Ministry source said.
"Most of them had been tortured," the source said of the dead, all of them dumped unceremoniously around the city of seven million, some on garbage dumps, others by the roadside.
Sunday's toll in the capital was 22. The figures have been as high as 60 per day in recent months and the United Nations has estimated that 100 people a day are being killed.
The Baghdad morgue alone took in an average of about 50 unidentified bodies a day in October, a 10 per cent increase on the previous month, a source at the institution told Reuters.
Many of those killed are kidnapped, tortured, shot or put to death in other ways intended to terrify the wider population. Officials say they have seen many bodies and heads mutilated by power drills.
Some groups seek to extract ransom from families and then may either free or kill their captives. Others seem bent mainly on driving out Sunni or Shi'ite Muslims from neighbourhoods where they are in the minority, steadily dividing the city along sectarian lines in a form of ethnic cleansing.
The US-sponsored national unity government, involving leaders from all communities, has struggled since it was formed six months ago to make headway in curbing the violence.
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced on Sunday he would fire numerous ministers to try to improve security.
After his party lost control of Congress last week, US President George W Bush was holding talks with advisers in the quest for new ideas that could stabilise Iraq and let US troops come home.
- REUTERS
