45 Iraqis massacred in Iraq

MOSUL (IRAQ): Gunmen massacred 45 men in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar in an apparent Shiite reprisal for deadly bombings that killed 75 people there, officials said on Wednesday.

"We received 45 bodies of handcuffed and blindfolded men from al-Wahada neighbourhood overnight. They were killed on Tuesday just after the bomb," a doctor at Tal Afar hospital said on condition of anonymity.

The shootings and bombings underscore the raging Sunni-Shiite sectarian warfare that has gripped Iraq.

Two bomb attacks in Tal Afar killed 75 and wounded 190 on Wednesday in Shiite districts of the mixed Sunni-Shiite town, which is witnessing its deadliest violence since US President George W Bush in March 2006 held up the onetime militant stronghold as a model for efforts to create a stable Iraq.

In the biggest attack, a suicide bomber tricked soldiers into believing he was bringing in food supplies to a Shiite area where he detonated his cargo of flour and explosives into a crowd of waiting men and women.

Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Ahmed Salah, a spokesman for the Iraqi army in Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province that is home to Tal Afar, confirmed there had been 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," the officer said.

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

The Iraqi army has slapped a strict curfew on the town, deployed armoured vehicles in downtown Tal Afar and banned even police from moving, an official said, also on condition of anonymity.