Iraq's government admitted on Thursday that policemen were behind the vengeful slaughter of 70 Sunni Arabs in a northern town, heightening concern about its complicity in sectarian killings.
Around 13 policemen have been arrested in connection with Tuesday's killing spree in Tal Afar, a mixed Sunni-Shiite town in northern Iraq that has been devastated by the nation's worst bout of sectarian violence in months.
Gunmen, at least some of whom survivors charged wore police uniforms, went on a bloody rampage through the Sunni district of Al-Wahada just hours after a presumed Sunni suicide bomber blew up a truck in a crowded Shiite district.
Survivors told harrowing tales of gunmen dragging men out of their homes, handcuffing and blindfolding their victims, before spraying gunfire at random leaving dead pensioners, fathers, sons and teenagers in their wake.
"They broke into our house wearing both police uniforms and plain clothes. They killed my husband and killed by son. Then they sprayed me with bullets. I was shot in the leg," Umm Abdul Sattar told AFP from hospital.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has ordered a full investigation into the shootings and Interior Minister Jawad Bolani confirmed Wednesday that the perpetrators were policemen, of whom an overwhelming majority are Shiites.
"We will take legal action against a group of them after the prime minister ordered an investigation," Bolani, an independent Shiite in Maliki's Shiite-dominated government, told Iraqiya television.
An Iraqi army source speaking on condition of anonymity said 13 policemen have been detained for the mass killings. A man who identified himself as a colonel in the Tal Afar operations said 12 to 13 police had been arrested.
Local doctors and army officers confirmed that 70 Sunni men were shot dead with a bullet in the head. The said another 40 people were missing and a further 30 -- mostly women -- wounded.
The truck bomb, diguised as a vehicle bringing flour to people after a week of food shortages, left 85 people dead and a 183 wounded in explosions that ripped apart flesh and buildings.
Tuesday's bombings and shootings were the worst bout of sectarian violence in the country since at least 202 people were killed on November 23 in a string of car bombings in the capital's Shiite district of Sadr City.
Iraq's leading Sunni religious organisation accused government security forces of dirtying themselves with sectarian violence, pointing the finger at the defence and interior ministries appointed by Maliki to probe the killings.
"A force from the interior ministry's sectarian militia committed a new communal massacre against innocent civilians," said the Muslim Scholars Association, which has links to Sunni insurgent groups, in Baghdad.
"We have warned about the nexus between the militia and government forces of the interior and defence ministries," it added.
Two lorries crammed with the bodies of more than 50 of the shooting victims were moved to a hospital in Mosul, the regional capital, along with two ambulances ferrying women wounded in the rampage, doctors and an AFP journalist said.
A doctor travelling in the convoy said the corpses were shipped to Mosul to get death certificates, accusing the Shiite-dominated hospital authorities in Tal Afar of refusing to provide adequate certification.
"All those killed and wounded are Sunnis. The incident was a reprisal after targeting a Shiite region," said Doctor Dhafar Mohammed, from Tal Afar Hospital who transported the lorries to Mosul.
On Thursday, the dead were driven from Mosul for burial at a cemetery in the countryside as doctors hinted the Shiite authorities in Tal Afar would bar the corpses access, and were seen off by several hundred mourners wailing in grief.
Back in Tal Afar, dozens of residents demonstrated overnight for the release of the detained policemen, said a source in the local operations room.
Over the past four years, tens of thousands of people have been killed in the insurgent and sectarian violence, most of them in Baghdad, triggering Washington to launch a last-ditch security crackdown last month.
The Tal Afar attacks are now raising concern that sectarian unrest is spreading further afield and made a mockery of comments from US President George W. Bush in 2006 that the town was a beacon of hope for the future.
In other attacks on Thursday at least 12 people were killed.
