Iraq's government admitted on Thursday that policemen were behind the vengeful slaughter of 70 Sunni Arabs in a northern town, heightening concern about its complicity in sectarian killings.
Around 13 policemen were briefly detained in connection with Tuesday's killing spree in Tal Afar, a mixed Sunni-Shiite town that has been devastated by the nation's worst bout of sectarian violence in months.
Gunmen, at least some of whom survivors charged wore police uniforms, went on a bloody rampage through the town's Sunni district of Al-Wahada after a presumed Sunni suicide bomber blew up a truck in a crowded Shiite district.
Survivors told harrowing tales of gunmen dragging men out of their homes, handcuffing and blindfolding their victims, before spraying gunfire at random leaving dead pensioners, fathers, sons and teenagers in their wake.
"They broke into our house wearing both police uniforms and plain clothes. They killed my husband and killed by son. Then they sprayed me with bullets. I was shot in the leg," Umm Abdul Sattar said from hospital.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has ordered a full investigation into the bombing and shootings but his investigative team comprising of members from the country's interior and defence ministries had not yet reached the town.
Interior Minister Jawad Bolani, an independent Shiite in the Shiite-dominated government, confirmed that the perpetrators were policemen, of whom an overwhelming majority are Shiites.
"We will take legal action against a group of them. An order has been issued by the prime minister to investigate the violations caused by elements of the police in Tal Afar," Bolani told Iraqiya television.
An Iraqi army source speaking on condition of anonymity said 13 policemen had been detained for the mass killings.
But later an Iraqi military spokesman in Mosul said the detained policemen were released as many of them had lost relatives in the truck bombing prior to the brutal rampage.
"We released them on the undertaking that they will be questioned later. The decision was taken because of their psychological state," he said without giving his name.
Local doctors and army officers confirmed that 70 Sunni men were shot dead with a bullet in the head. They said another 40 people were missing and a further 30 - mostly women - wounded.
The truck bomb, disguised as a vehicle bringing flour to people after a week of food shortages, left 85 people dead and a 183 wounded in explosions that ripped apart flesh and buildings.
Tuesday's bombings and shootings were the worst bout of sectarian violence in the country since at least 202 people were killed on November 23 in a string of car bombings in the capital's Shiite district of Sadr City.
Iraq's leading Sunni religious organisation accused government security forces of dirtying themselves with sectarian violence, pointing the finger at the two ministries appointed by Maliki to probe the killings.
"A force from the interior ministry's sectarian militia committed a new communal massacre against innocent civilians," said the Muslim Scholars Association, which has links to Sunni insurgent groups, in Baghdad.
Two lorries crammed with the bodies of more than 50 of the shooting victims were moved to a hospital in Mosul, the regional capital, along with two ambulances ferrying women wounded in the rampage, doctors said.
A doctor travelling in the convoy said the corpses were shipped to Mosul to get death certificates, accusing the Shiite-dominated hospital authorities in Tal Afar of refusing to provide adequate certification.
"All those killed and wounded are Sunnis. The incident was a reprisal after targeting a Shiite region," said Doctor Dhafar Mohammed, from Tal Afar Hospital who transported the lorries to Mosul.
On Thursday, the dead were driven from Mosul for burial at a cemetery in the countryside as doctors hinted the Shiite authorities in Tal Afar would bar the corpses access, and were seen off by several hundred mourners wailing in grief.
The latest attacks are now raising concern that sectarian unrest is spreading further afield and made a mockery of comments from US President George W. Bush in 2006 that the town was a beacon of hope for the future.
In other violence at least 12 people were killed on Thursday.
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