Bodies found in river may be Shiite hostages

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The bodies of more than 50 people have been fished out of the Tigris River south of Baghdad, and officials said Wednesday that they may be the corpses of the mystery hostages reported seized last week from the town of Madain.

The reports of the grisly discovery coincided with a further intensification of insurgent violence that claimed at least 25 more lives, including those of 19 Iraqi soldiers shot to death execution-style in a soccer stadium in western Iraq.

Meanwhile, Ayad Allawi’s aides told news agencies that the interim prime minister escaped an assassination attempt in Baghdad when his convoy was targeted by a suicide bomber Wednesday night.

It was the fourth bombing of the day in the capital, where hopes that the insurgency had been running out of steam are beginning to fade amid a renewed onslaught of attacks around the country over the past week.

Four other people were reported killed in three earlier car bombings, overshadowing news that Iraq’s squabbling politicians may finally have agreed on the formation of a new government, nearly three months after Iraqis voted in their landmark democratic election.

The bodies in the river were apparently discovered earlier this week in the town of Suwayrah, about 15 miles downstream from Madain, where reports of the mass seizure of Shiite hostages by Sunni insurgents last weekend had fueled tensions in the troubled, mixed Sunni-Shiite region south of Baghdad.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told reporters that officials have identified the bodies of those found and that they are believed to be the missing hostages, whose existence had been called into doubt after security forces failed to find any evidence to support the claims of local residents that they had been taken.

Iraqi and U.S. security forces rushed to the town of Madain on Saturday after residents said insurgents had taken as many as 100 local Shiites hostage. But when they arrived, no hostages were found, and officials later dismissed the reports as rumors fueled by Shiite-Sunni rivalries in the area.

A resident of Suwayrah who said he helped fish the bodies out of the river told Al-Arabiya television that the corpses were found stuffed in plastic bags and that several of them had been beheaded. Most of them appeared to have been young men, but there were several children and at least two girls among them, the resident said.

Iraqi television stations showed what it said were photographs of the corpses and quoted local police officials as saying 58 bodies had been found.

U.S. officials said they had no information about the discovery and there was no way of independently confirming whether the bodies found belonged to hostages abducted in Madain. Local officials told Iraq’s Al Hurra television that it is not uncommon for bodies to be dumped in the river and that more than 80 have been found in the past month.

The reports are nonetheless likely to further inflame tensions between the two communities in the volatile area, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, that has long been in the grip of insurgent violence.

The 19 executed Iraqi soldiers were traveling together, unarmed and in civilian clothes, when they were abducted by insurgents and taken to the soccer stadium in Haditha, 125 miles west of Baghdad, police said Wednesday. They were then lined up against a wall and shot, witnesses told news agencies. A 20th soldier was reported to have survived with serious injuries, reports said.

One of the bomb attacks in Baghdad targeted a U.S. patrol in the Amriyah neighborhood, setting alight at least one Humvee. The U.S. military said it could not immediately say whether there had been any U.S. casualties.