MOSUL - The bodies of 14 men killed with a single bullet to the head were found in a cemetery in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday, local medical officials and an AFP journalist said.
"We have received the bodies of eight young men executed with a bullet to the head," said doctor Ahmad Abdallah Rajab of Mosul's general hospital, adding that they had been dead about 15 hours.
Forensics were in the process of identifying the victims, he added.
The AFP journalist who went to the cemetery where the eight were found, said that he saw another six bodies in civilian clothes, killed in the same fashion.
Since early December, more than 60 bodies, mostly of Iraqi security forces personnel, have been found in the Mosul area after being executed and dumped by insurgents patrolling the predominantly Sunni Muslim city.
Meanwhile, Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said that violence would increase in Iraq after January's landmark elections and accused neighbouring Syria of failing to stop insurgents infiltrating the border.
"Terrorist strikes and attacks will not stop after the elections. On the contrary they will increase because this is a fight between good and evil - between terrorists who want to destroy Iraq and we who are trying to build the country on a democratic basis," he said.
"Elements of the Saddam regime continue to harm Iraq and it will not be easy to eradicate attacks after January 30," he added in a speech to the interim national assembly in Baghdad.
Although attacks had fallen from an average of 80 to 50 a day, Allawi said their nature had changed. Strikes against officials were daily, he said, and economic infrastructure was being sabotaged in order to sow "chaos".
"This has been the case recently for oil and electricity," he said, referring to suspected sabotage in the oil refinery town of Baiji, which officials said Monday brought electricity generation to a halt nationwide.
Casting the net further afield, Allawi reiterated frequent Iraqi criticism that Syria has failed to stop insurgents infiltrating the common border.
"Certain neighbouring countries," he said, were "supposed to make more effort".
"I sent President (Bashar) al-Assad a letter with a minister, explaining that these matters are damaging relations between the two countries," he said.
In Fallujah, he insisted that last month's massive US-Iraqi assault against the Sunni Muslim stronghold had "cleared the town of terrorists" and that the authorities were working to allow residents to return within days.
"We have drawn up a timetable and if God desires it, residents can begin returning next week," he said, pledging government aid to those needing to rebuild their homes in the devastated city.
"There are intensive preparations for mine clearing, restoring services and bringing back police," he promised.
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