BAGHDAD, February 16, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The Iraqi Interior Ministry said on Thursday, February 16, it has set up a commission of enquiry to probe reports of a "death squad" within the police force targeting Sunnis.

"The interior minister has ordered the setting up of a commission of enquiry to look into this matter," Major-General Hussein Kamal, the deputy minister in charge of intelligence, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

US Major-General Joseph Peterson, in charge of training the Iraqi police, told the Chicago Tribune newspaper that 22 policemen, dressed in police commando uniforms, were arrested in late January in northern Baghdad as they took away a Sunni to be shot.

He said the policemen arrested owed their allegiance to the Badr Organization, a militia loyal to the ruling Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

The discovery of the death squad came by chance when the policemen, who had been stopped at an Iraqi army checkpoint, readily admitted they were taking a prisoner away to shoot him, Peterson said.

Last November, more than 170 malnourished and beaten prisoners, many of them Sunni Arabs, were found locked in a bunker belonging to the interior ministry.

The US army announced on Thursday, December 29, plans to deploy more troops with special Iraqi police units to rein in sectarian elements running amok.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has issued a stark warning to Interior Minister Bayan Jabr Solagh, a former Shiite militia member, over the importance of impartiality.

"You can't have someone regarded as sectarian as a minister of the interior," asserted the US diplomat.

The Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), the largest religious Sunni body in Iraq, said the death squad discovery was not an isolated incident.

"It's not just one death squad. There are many," an AMS spokesman told AFP, declining to be named because of fear for his life.

"In the northern Baghdad district of Hurriyah alone, some 70 young men from our community have been killed by these units, and the overall toll figure is likely to be more than 1,000 and includes 20 imams," he asserted.

The AMS has repeatedly denounced such crimes and called on the United Nations to investigate the allegations, he said.

Iraqi Sunni Arabs threatened on Wednesday, February 1, civil disobedience if their concerns about ongoing arrests and security sweeps against them are not met.

Sunnis have long complained of campaign of revenge, crackdown, and assassination against members of their community being carried out by Shiite militias with links to security services.

They have specifically accused the Shiite-dominant interior ministry of taking a leading role in severe abuses, including the targeting of Sunnis by "death squads".

Muntazar Al-Samarrai, an interior ministry's whistle-blower who was in charge of the special forces unit, accused Solagh and senior officials at his ministry of condoning torture and abuses of detainees.