The bodies of 18 men, bound, blindfolded and strangled, were found in a Baghdad district, apparent victims of sectarian turmoil gripping Iraq and threatening the formation of a coalition government. Three years after U.S. troops invaded to topple Saddam Hussein, the U.S. State Department said killings by the U.S.-backed government or its agents had increased in 2005 and that members of sectarian militias dominated many police units. Iraq's Shi'ite interior minister escaped an apparent assassination attempt when a roadside bomb blasted his convoy. Minister Bayan Jabor, however, was not in his car. In its annual report on human rights abuses worldwide, the State Department said: "Police abuses included threats, intimidation, beatings, and suspension by the arms or legs, as well as the reported use of electric drills and cords and the application of electric shocks."
