Iraq Watch: June 6, 2006

Prime Minister Announces Release of 2,500 Prisoners

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Northeast of Baghdad, in Hadid, police discovered the decapitated heads of nine individuals. The severed heads were found in a fruit box left discarded on the highway.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced the release of some 2,500 prisoners currently being held at U.S. and Iraqi detention facilities. The pardon is seen by many as an effort by Iraq's newly-appointed leader, a Shiite, to garner good will from Iraq's minority Sunnis who form the core of the violent insurgency that has been plaguing Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March of 2003.

Elsewhere, four people were killed and 18 wounded when a car bomb exploded near a funeral procession in the capital's largely Shiite neighborhood of al-Amel.

In eastern Baghdad, mortar rounds killed two civilians and injured nine others.

At the Baghdad University School of Business and Administration gunmen killed one student and kidnapped three more.

Also Tuesday, the head of a local council, Thoaban Abdul Kathim, was assassinated along with two colleagues as they were on their way to work in western Baghdad.

In the southern city of Basra, Reuters reports that five people were gunned down as they attempted to collect the body of a relative killed a day earlier.

Iraq's second largest city, Basra is nestled along the banks of the Shatt al-Arab waterway. The predominately Shiite town has recently been the scene of unprecedented violence as rival militias battle one another for control of the port city. Sectarian violence has also seen a sharp incline in recent months as has attacks against British forces based in the area.