By Raheem Salman
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A shooting and bombing attack on a bus near Baghdad killed 52 prisoners and nine policemen on Thursday, Ministry of Justice and medical sources said, the latest in a string of assaults on prisoners in Iraq.
The motive for Thursday's killings was not immediately clear but Iraqi security forces and government affiliated Shi'ite militias appear to have unlawfully executed at least 255 prisoners over the past month in apparent revenge for killings by Sunni militants, according to Human Rights Watch.
The bus was transporting prisoners from a military base in the town of Taji to Baghdad when it was hit by roadside bombs, the sources said. Gunmen then opened fire.
Much of Iraq's bloodshed these days is linked to deep sectarian divisions that have grown worse since Sunni militants formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized large swathes of northern Iraq last month and declared an Islamic empire.
In June, 69 prisoners were killed while being transported from an outlying town to a jail in Baghdad. The official account, given by the governor of Hilla, was that militants had attacked the convoy, killing 10 prisoners and one policeman.
But a police captain, a second police officer and a senior local official told Reuters no attack took place, and that police had executed the 69 men.
IRAQ FIGHTS FOR SURVIVAL
In northern Iraq, Kurdish peshmerga fighters, who have for weeks been battling Islamic State militants in Jalawla, 115 km (70 miles) northeast of Baghdad, took complete control of the town after overnight clashes.
Jalawla lies in disputed territory, and is one of several towns where Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga regional guards have previously faced off against each other, asserting their competing claims over the area.
In June, Kurdish forces took control of the northern oil city of Kirkuk after government troops abandoned their posts in the face of the Sunni Islamist rebel march towards Baghdad.
Kurds have long dreamed of taking Kirkuk and its huge oil reserves. They regard the city, just outside their autonomous region, as their historical capital.
Thursday's violence underscored the urgent need for Iraqi leaders to form a power-sharing government to hold Iraq together as its future as its unified state is increasingly under threat from the advance of Sunni Islamist militants.
Iraq's million-strong army, trained and equipped by the United States, has largely collapsed, especially in the north after Islamists overran the city of Mosul last month.
Iraq's politicians have been in deadlock over forming a new government since an election in April.
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has ruled since the election in a caretaker capacity, defying demands from the Sunnis and Kurds that he step aside for a less-polarising figure. Even some Shi'ite politicians want Maliki to go.
Iraq's parliament, which had been due to elect the country's president on Wednesday, postponed the vote by a day.
Under Iraq's governing system, in place since the post-Saddam Hussein constitution was adopted in 2005, the prime minister is a member of the Shi'ite majority, the speaker a Sunni and the largely ceremonial president a Kurd.
Washington hopes a more inclusive government in Baghdad could save Iraq by persuading moderate Sunnis to turn against the insurgency, as many did during the "surge" offensive in 2006-7 when U.S. troops paid them to switch sides.
(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
