Fourty-five die as angry Shiite police go on killing spree

Our police are not so shite they would have just arrested them.

[link to news.bbc.co.uk]

Dozens killed in north Iraq city

Gunmen have killed at least 45 people in a Sunni district in the northwestern Iraqi border town of Talafar.

The deaths were in apparent reprisal for bombings in a Shia area on Tuesday, which killed about 55 others. Iraqi officials said the attack was on the al-Wahada district, where tensions have been rising between Shia, Sunni and Turkmen residents.

"Shia armed groups killed Sunni men inside their homes," the town's mayor Brigadier Najim al-Jubouri said.

Some reports said the gunmen may have been off-duty Shia policemen.

The police had been the target of an angry demonstration by the families of those killed and injured in the earlier bombings.

'Handcuffed bodies'

Doctors at Talafar hospital said that 45 bodies of handcuffed and blindfolded men had been received from the neighbourhood overnight.

"They are lying in the grounds. We don't have enough space in the hospital. All of the victims were shot in the head," one said.

An Iraqi army spokesman in Mosul, Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Ahmed Salah, described the killings as a "reprisal act".

"A violent incident happened [on Tuesday] and a reprisal act happened in al-Wahada, which is in the south of the town, just after the bombings," he said.

"The situation is under control right now and we have started an investigation into the incident."

The Iraqi army has imposed a curfew on the town, deployed armoured vehicles and even banned police from moving, an army officer said.