Iraq Watch: June 7, 2006

Violence Kills Over 20

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Violence in Iraq continued largely unabated Wednesday claiming the lives of over 20 Iraqis.

Meanwhile, nearly 600 prisoners were released early Wednesday as part of a national reconciliation program announced yesterday by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that will eventually lead to some 2,500 inmates being freed.

Nearly 30,000 prisoners are currently interned at U.S. and Iraqi jails across the country. The vast majority of those imprisoned are Sunnis apprehended on suspicion of ties to the insurgency.

The prominent Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) praised Wednesday's prisoner release saying that it, "give['s] happiness and hope to every detainee and every oppressed person in this country."

Four Iraqi police officers were gunned down in a shootout with insurgents in the capital's upscale western Mansour neighborhood. Two other Iraqi policemen, including a colonel, were killed in a roadside bombing in eastern Baghdad. Separately, a police officer was slain in a drive-by shooting in Mosul, north of Baghdad.

Also in Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near an outdoor marketplace in a largely Shiite district of the capital killing at least two civilians and wounding 12 others.

Elsewhere, militants attacked Iraqi soldiers in the religiously mixed city of Baqouba killing at least two and injuring two others.

In Hawija, a Sunni imam, who, according to AFP was sympathetic to insurgents, was abducted from his home late Tuesday. His corpse, riddled with bullets, was found early Wednesday.