just another day in Iraq

Juan Cole

Iraq's streets continued to function as a macabre open morgue. Police found 25 corpses, most showing signs of torture, in Baghdad. The creeping back up of the number of corpses found each day suggests renewed activity on the part of death squads, both Sunni and Shiite. I'm surprised that they are able to operate with such impunity in the capital given the increase in the number of US and Iraqi troops there.

In Mosul, nine bodies were found. Near Diwaniyah in the Shiite south, 4 bodies were discovered. There has been fighting in Diwaniya between the Mahdi Army and local police, dominated by the Badr Corps of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. In Suwayra south of Baghdad, 3 bodies were fished from a river.

In Ramadi, authorities made a gruesome discovery of a small mass grave with 17 decomposing bodies in it, probably victims of the Salafi Jihadi movement, "The Islamic State of Iraq."

There were also scattered car bombings and mortar strikes.

UPDATE: BBC

At least 157 people have been killed in a string of attacks in Iraq's capital, Baghdad, security officials say.

In the deadliest incident, some 115 people were killed in a car bombing in a food market in Sadriya district.

An attack on a police checkpoint in Sadr City and several other explosions left at least another 42 people dead.