Baghdad (Iraq): The bodies of 18 men have been found strangled with their hands tied behind their backs in western Baghdad, an official with the Baghdad Emergency Police said on Wednesday.
According to the official, police discovered the bodies in a Kia minibus on Tuesday night in the Amiriya neighbourhood.
The men were of different age groups and their exact age has not been identified as yet.
Baghdad Police also said six other bodies were found in the Capital - five had been shot and one had been beheaded.
Over the past few months, similar incidents have helped to fuel worries over the possibility of civil war between Shiite and Sunni Arabs.
However, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, while criticising media coverage of the war on Tuesday, said that he didn't think there was a possibility of civil war in Iraq.
"They want just the opposite," Rumsfeld said of the Iraqi people. "And they've demonstrated the courage to show that they want just the opposite."
Rumsfeld slammed mediapersons, saying many of the stories following recent sectarian violence were exaggerated.
Since the February 22 bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, news reports have cited the fears of Iraqi and US officials that the security situation could spiral out of control into communal warfare.
"It isn't as though there simply have been a series of random errors on both sides of issues," Rumsfeld said. "On the contrary, the steady stream of errors all seem to be of a nature to inflame the situation and to give heart to the terrorists and to discourage those who hope for success in Iraq."
The defense chief touted the Iraqi security forces, saying the army and police have shown leadership that "has to be seen as encouraging despite the apparent unwillingness of some to accept it."
Rumsfeld acknowledged that violence is slowing Iraq's progress and that militias pose problems for the government, but he said the number of attacks hadn't increased substantially.
"I think that these things go in bursts, and the burst has passed," he said. "And it's been handled pretty well. And there will be another burst at some point down the road, simply because that's the nature of that part of the world and the situation."
A US soldier has also been killed in northern Iraq on Wednesday.
Since March 2003, 2,305 US soldiers have died in Iraq.
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