Mortar barrages, roadside bombings and drive-by shootings killed 10 Iraqis, officials said yesterday, and Iraq's new government vowed to crackdown against the killers of more than 40 people found slain in the past 48 hours.

　　Batches of bodies, many blindfolded and bound, were found in various locations over the weekend, from a rubbish-strewn vacant lot in Baghdad's Sadr City to a chicken farm south of the capital in a region dubbed the Triangle of Death.

　　Few details were available on the possible reasons for the killings. Insurgents regularly target Iraqi security forces, government officials and others deemed to be collaborating with US-led forces in the country. Others are kidnapped and killed to extort lucrative ransoms from their families. But there have also been a stream of retaliatory attacks between armed Sunni and Shiite groups.

　　The spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari condemned the killings and said security forces were determined to catch those responsible.

　　The attacks "aim to create sectarian fighting in the country because such clashes could bring more recruits to (militant) groups," spokesman Laith Kuba said yesterday. "The government is aware of that and will not let this plan succeed."

　　Over the weekend the bodies of at least 41 people were found. They included two Iraqi journalists found in their car on a road south of Baghdad, 10 soldiers dumped in the battleground city of Ramadi, two truck drivers lying with nine other bodies in the chicken farm and a judge found nearby.

　　Many of the victims had been blindfolded, bound, shot multiple times in the head and dumped in the open. Most - including the 13 found in Sadr City - had no documents to identify them.

　　Associated Press Television News obtained footage yesterday showing at least three more bodies, who police said had been shot in the head, being brought into a Baghdad hospital. The bodies had been dumped near a dam in the capital's eastern Shaab neighborhood, police said.

　　Another body was found yesterday, this time an Iraqi Kurd shot in the head and chest and left in a garbage dump in Kirkuk, 290 kilometers north of Baghdad, police and witnesses said.

　　More than 460 people have been killed in a wave of bombings and ambushes launched since the April 28 announcement of the new Iraqi government.

　　That violence continued with officials saying yesterday that mortar rounds, homemade bombs and drive-by shootings killed eight people and injured at least 10.

　　Four Iraqi soldiers were killed and at least four people wounded after a mortar and roadside bomb attack against a fire station in Khan Bani Saad, a town 30 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, said police Colonel Mudafar Mohammed.

　　A roadside bomb killed four soldiers who had raced to the town's fire station, which had come mortar fire attack, Mohammed said.

　　Two civilians were killed in Baghdad's southwestern Saydiya district when another roadside bomb exploded as an Iraqi army convoy passed. The explosion also wounded four people. At least three mortar rounds slammed into different parts of the capital, including one that hit the Engineering College of Mustansiriyah University, killing two people and wounding 12, the Interior Ministry said.

　　Gunmen also killed a Baghdad-based policeman and his wife in a drive-by shooting late on Sunday near the village of Aalgaya, about 95 kilometers south of Baghdad.

　　(The Associated Press)