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"BAGHDAD  \u2014 The Islamic militant group that captured two major cities last week posted graphic photos on Sunday that appeared to show its fighters massacring dozens of captured Iraqi soldiers.\nThe pictures on a militant website appear to show masked fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, loading the captives onto flatbed trucks before forcing them to lie face-down in a shallow ditch with their arms tied behind their backs. The final images show the bodies of the captives soaked in blood after being shot.\nThe grisly images could further sharpen sectarian tensions as hundreds of Shiites heed a call from their most revered spiritual leader to take up arms against the Sunni militants who have swept across the north. ISIL has vowed to take the battle to Baghdad and cities further south housing revered Shiite shrines.\nA car bomb meanwhile exploded in central Baghdad, killing 10 and wounding 21, according to police and hospital officials. Baghdad has seen an escalation in suicide and car bombings in recent months, mostly targeting Shiite neighborhoods or security forces.\nWhile the city of seven million is not in any immediate danger of falling into the hands of the militants, Sunday's bombing is likely to raise tensions. Food prices in the city have risen, twofold in some cases, because of disruption to transport on the main road heading north from the capital.\nThe government bolstered defenses around Baghdad Sunday, a day after hundreds of Shiite men paraded through the streets with arms in response to a call by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for Iraqis to defend their country. ISIL has vowed to attack Baghdad but its advance to the south seems to have stalled in recent days.\nGovernment officials said ISIL fighters were trying to capture the city of Tal Afar in northern Iraq on Sunday and raining down rockets seized last week from military arms depots. The officials said the local garrison suffered heavy casualties and the town's main hospital was unable to cope with the number of wounded, without providing exact numbers.\nIraq's top military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, confirmed that fighting was raging at Tal Afar, but indicated that the militants were suffering heavy casualties. On all fronts north of the capital, he said, a total of 297 militants have been killed in the past 24 hours.\nThere was no way to independently confirm his claims.\n\nImage posted on militant website appears to show Iraqi soldiers, many in civilian clothes, being led to their deaths.Image: Via Associated Press/Associated PressThe captions of the photos released on Sunday say the killings were to avenge the killing of an ISIL commander, Abdul-Rahman al-Beilawy, whose death was reported by both the government and ISIL shortly before the al-Qaeda splinter group's lightning offensive, which has plunged Iraq into its bloodiest crisis since the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011.\n\"This is the fate that awaits the Shiites sent by Nouri to fight the Sunnis,\" one caption read, apparently referring to Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.\nAl-Moussawi, the military spokesman, confirmed the photos' authenticity and said he was aware of cases of mass murder of captured Iraqi soldiers in areas held by ISIL.\nMost of the soldiers who appear in the pictures are in civilian clothes. Some are shown wearing military uniforms underneath, indicating they may have hastily disguised themselves as civilians to try to escape.\nMany soldiers and policemen left their uniforms and equipment behind as the militants swept into Mosul, Tikrit and surrounding areas.\nThe captions did not provide a date or location, but al-Moussawi said the killings took place in Salahuddin province, the capital of which is Tikrit.\nSome of the pictures appeared to show some of the soldiers pleading for their lives, others seemed terrified.\nAll soldiers appeared in their early 20s, with some wearing the jerseys of such European soccer clubs like Manchester United and Barcelona. Some of the militants wore black baggy pants and shirts, many of them had sandals or flip flops."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/06/15/militants-in-iraq-post-images-showing-massacre-of-soldiers/>