Iraq PM says Kurdish Arbil becoming a base for Islamic State...

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Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Wednesday the Kurdish-controlled city of Arbil was becoming an operations base for the Islamic State militant group that seized swathes of northern and western Iraq last month.

"We will never be silent about Arbil becoming a base for the operations of the Islamic State and Baathists and Al Qaeda and the terrorists," Maliki said in his weekly televised address.

Maliki's relationship with Kurdish President Massoud Barzani has deteriorated amid the sectarian insurgency that has threatened to split the country. Many Sunni Muslims who fled the northern city of Mosul during the militants' offensive have ended up in Arbil.

Early on Wednesday, Iraqi security forces found 53 corpses, blindfolded and handcuffed, in a town south of Baghdad, local officials said.

They said the bodies had been left in the mainly Shi'ite Muslim village of Khamissiya, about 25 km (15 miles) southeast of the city of Hilla, near the main highway running from the capital to the southern provinces.

The head of the provincial council, local police and the governor's office all confirmed the discovery of the bodies, but had no immediate information on the identity of the dead, who appeared to have been killed execution style.

The bodies were found at 2 a.m. (2300 GMT) on Wednesday, they said.

Sunni Islamist fighters seized control of large parts of northern and western Iraq last month, sweeping towards Baghdad in the most serious challenge to the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki since the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2011.

Fierce fighting between the insurgents and the army, backed by Shi'ite militias, has raised fears of a return to the devastating sectarian bloodshed which peaked in Iraq in 2006 and 2007.

Sunni militants have been carrying out attacks around the southern rim of Baghdad since the spring. In response, Shi'ite militias have been active in the rural districts of Baghdad, abducting Sunnis they suspected of terorrism, many of whom later turn up dead.

According to medical officials, the number of unidentified bodies found around Baghdad have risen steadily since the beginning of the year.

REUTERS