IRAQ’s relentless sectarian violence has taken a gruesome twist with the discovery yesterday of nine severed heads, packaged in fruit boxes and delivered to the capital of one of the country’s provinces.

Even by Iraq’s bloody standards, the ritual of kidnappings, torture and now beheadings has raised fears that the country is sliding towards civil war. The Government, paralysed by infighting, is unable to tackle Iraq’s security needs.

The province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, a largely agricultural community of sleepy villages and market towns, has for centuries been home to a mixed population of Sunni and Shia Muslims and some ethnic Kurds.

Within a week it has become the most feared region in Iraq. Yesterday nine heads were found in cardboard banana boxes in Baquba, the provincial capital. A few days earlier police had found eight severed heads north of the town. Between the attacks, gunmen stopped two minivans carrying students and shot 21 of them dead by the side of the road.

Raad Rasheed, the governor of Diyala, said: “There are also well-equipped, armed groups that force people to leave houses and spread violence. The province has limited capabilities for dealing with it.” Beheading victims has become a common form of execution among Islamic militant groups in Iraq. It is seen as a way of terrorising rival communities into leaving mixed areas.

Saturday’s dead were named as Abulaziz Hamid al-Mashhadani, a local Sunni Muslim preacher, and seven cousins. A note found near the bodies suggested that the murders were in revenge for the murder of four Shia doctors. Yesterday’s victims had not been identified.

Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, promised to impose a plan to restore order in Baghdad and Diyala. “The parties that are against the political process have increased their bloody operations to derail and bring down the national unity Government, but, God willing, they will lose,” he said.

Ordinary Iraqis are sceptical. Last week he declared a state of emergency in the southern city of Basra, but sectarian violence continued unabated. Members of the ruling Shia party, involved in a power struggle, have failed again to agree on the appointment of defence and interior ministers, the two key security portfolios.

In the absence of a functioning government, the violence is spiralling out of control. Yesterday it was reported that the bodies of more than 6,000 murder victims had been taken to Baghdad’s main mortuary this year alone.

“The security situation is complicated,” Mr al-Maliki said. “The mission is tough, but we have short and long-term plans to fight and defeat terrorists and ensure security.”

As a gesture to ease tensions, the Government announced that it would free about 2,500 prisoners, and the first 500 are to be released today.

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