Dr. Rice Surprise Visit to Iraq finds pile of bodies

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Condoleezza Rice has urged the Iraqi government to find ways to include disaffected Sunnis (PETER MACKLER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

<snip>Yet even as she was shuttled across the country, insurgents stepped up their campaign of terror on a day in which 42 people died. It began with a double suicide-bomb attack against Raad Rashid, the Governor of Diyala province. He escaped unhurt, but four policemen and two civilians were killed. The attack followed assassinations of two government officials, one who worked at the Industry Ministry, the other at the Foreign Ministry. A Shia cleric was also murdered by gunmen.

Then police found the handcuffed bodies of 13 men near the sprawling Sadr City slum in Baghdad. They had been shot dead and abandoned in a rubbish dump.

West of Baghdad, in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, the remains of ten Iraqi soldiers were found with their throats cut. South of the capital, in Iskandariya, the corpses of eleven more Iraqis, thought to be lorry drivers, were found in a field, four of them beheaded. snip

Abu Ali, a taxi driver, said: “I heard Rice was here. Is she here to improve electricity? Is she here to listen to the agonies of the Iraqi people? Of course not. She is here to promote American interests, not Iraq’s.”

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