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Roadside bombings in Iraq kill 6Iraqi ministry launches death squad probe
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YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSBAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A civilian, a security guard, three local police officers and a U.S. soldier were killed in a spate of bomb attacks in Iraq Saturday, and police said they found the bodies of two shooting victims in Baghdad. One bomb exploded in the morning, killing three Iraqi police officers and wounding three others, while they were securing oil tankers on the Mohammad Kassin Highway in central Baghdad. Another bomb targeted the convoy of the head of the Karrade Police, Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Maryoush, in central Baghdad late in the morning, police said. One of his security guards was killed and another wounded. A separate attack struck a U.S. soldier's vehicle in eastern Baghdad, killing him. The casualty brings the number of U.S. troop deaths in the Iraq war to 2,274. Northeast of Baghdad, on the outskirts of Baquba, a bomb attack killed a civilian and wounded five others, said an official with Diyala's Joint Coordination Center. The target appeared to be civilians, since no security forces were in the area at the time, the official said. Iraqi police said they also found two bodies shot in the head, neither of them with identification, one in Rustumiye in southeast Baghdad and the other in Ghazaliye in northwest Baghdad. It was not clear when the victims were killed, police said. The discovery comes a day after Iraqi emergency police said they found four bodies in the northwestern Baghdad neighborhood of Shula. All the bodies showed signs of torture, and the victims were shot in the back of the head, authorities said. None of those bodies had any identification on them, police said. Iraqi police are also investigating the abduction on Thursday of two Macedonians working for the services company Ecologue. They were traveling in southern Iraq outside Basra when they were taken, said a spokesperson for the British military there on Saturday. (Details) Iraqi ministry launches death squad probeIraq's Interior Ministry is launching an investigation into reports of a death squad operating within the ministry, an official said Friday. The ministry will look into the detention last month by U.S. soldiers of 22 Iraqi men who were dressed like police and were about to kill a Sunni Arab, said ministry official Hussein Kamal. A U.S. military official in Baghdad on Thursday confirmed a Chicago Tribune report of American officials finding evidence of an alleged death squad within the Interior Ministry. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said the 22 men detained at an Iraqi army checkpoint last month in the capital were Iraqi highway patrol officers. Of them, four were "planning to conduct a kidnapping and murder" of a Sunni man, he said. (Full story) The report comes as Iraqi officials try to cobble together national security forces. Sunni Arabs, who held power until Saddam Hussein's ouster, have accused the Interior Ministry of using Shiite militias to target them for retribution. Iraq's insurgency is believed to be a predominantly Sunni Arab movement. Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr is a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite group backed by the Badr Organization, a political militia group. Other developmentsCNN's Arwa Damon and Terence Burke contributed to this report. 
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