Many Corpses, but Few Details

"We do not know what happened to him," said the woman, Fatima Radi, 28. "He is the father of two children."

Like others, she had come to a police station here where local authorities were trying to determine the identity of corpses found nearby in the Tigris River in recent weeks, a discovery that has elevated sectarian tensions and shaken the new Iraqi government even before it has finished forming.

Ferreting fact from rumor is never easy in the incendiary climate of contemporary Iraq, where political leaders on all sides have endeavored to use gruesome events for partisan advantage.

Shiite Muslims say the killings are part of a Sunni Muslim campaign of "ethnic cleansing," and Sunnis say the victims may include members of their sect detained by Shiite-dominated police forces. But interviews with officials, families of victims and other knowledgeable people in Suwayrah and in Baghdad have lent some measure of clarity to the murky and bloody rampage that police say has resulted in the discovery of at least 60 bodies in the muddy river here.

What has emerged is evidence of an intermittent series of sectarian killings that began more than a month ago, as Sunni Arab insurgents stepped up a brutal campaign of intimidation throughout the zone. Previously, Shiite officials had said the bodies resulted from a single episode of hostage-taking and a massacre in one town over the course of a few days.

Some victims, police say, may have initially been taken hostage. But police in Suwayrah say it is likely many were motorists passing through the area when stopped by masked men bearing Kalashnikov rifles at impromptu checkpoints.

Assailants were believed to have later executed those taken away -- a chillingly common practice here -- and dumped their remains in the river, where they washed downstream to this agricultural center. Despite the assertions Wednesday of transitional President Jalal Talabani that all the victims and killers had been identified, the great majority of the dead remained anonymous.

"Most of the bodies cannot be identified," said the Suwayrah police commander, Lt. Col. Khalil Ubaid Kadim Ajeeli. Police in Suwayrah, who are closest to the case, also say there are few clues as to the identity of the assailants.