THE corpses of 15 strangled men were discovered yesterday in the back of a pick-up truck in a Sunni area of west Baghdad.

The bodies of 27 other Iraqis, their hands bound and with tape across their mouths, were found in a pit in southeast Baghdad after children playing football noticed the stench. The victims had been tortured and shot.

In Sadr City, the Shia slum in northeast Baghdad, four men were found hanged, and three others had been tied to pylons and shot in the head, bearing “traitor” signs.

All day yesterday police and army patrols across the Iraqi capital were finding the bodies of men who had been tortured and killed. Hospital officials said that they had received about forty bodies, all shot. By nightfall an estimated eighty-seven corpses had been found in twenty-four hours, the latest victims of the sectarian killings driving Shias and Sunnis apart. Many had been killed with a sadism shocking even by the standards of Iraq’s three years of bloodletting.

For ordinary Iraqis, fear of falling into the hands of sectarian killers exceeds that of being caught by a car bomb.The discovery of the 15 strangled bodies in the suburb of al-Khadra was typical of the new peril. Last week 18 men were found killed in similar fashion, their bodies crammed into a minibus.

No one could say who the killers were. One victim yesterday was identified from papers found on him as a 22-year-old Sunni student called Laith. The authorities often withhold victims’ identities, however, for fear of sparking more revenge attacks.

Official figures indicate that 450 people died in the two weeks after the bomb attack on the Shia shrine in Samarra on February 22, although the true figure may be higher. Now more are dying in revenge for car bombs in Sadr City on Sunday that killed 58 people and injured more than 200. The killings threaten to ignite full-scale civil war.

There is agreement that the failure of Iraq’s political parties to form a government three months after elections is encouraging those seeking to derail the political process through violence.

Times Recommends

• Rio Tinto four held as China prepares case
• Diplomats must keep heads down and trousers up
• When in Rome should one make like Berlusconi?