Associated Press
LONDON - Death squads responsible for sectarian killings in Iraq are not linked to the government but to private security forces, Iraq's interior minister said in an interview broadcast yesterday.
"There are some forces out of order, not under our control, and not under the control of the Ministry of Defense," Bayan Jabr told the British Broadcasting Corp. in an interview conducted Tuesday in Baghdad.
Jabr said security agencies protecting ministries and private companies employ about 180,000 people, many of whom "are uniformed like the police, their cars like the police."
"Terrorists or someone who support the terrorists... are using the clothes of the police or the military," he said.
Jabr cited the Facility Protection Service, an armed force set up in 2003 to guard official buildings. He said the 150,000-strong FPS was "not under our control."
Private security companies employ about 30,000 civilians, he said.
Sectarian violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims has spiked since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, threatening to push Iraq into all-out civil war.
Many reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques and clerics following the bombing were believed to have been carried out by Shiite militias or death squads operating inside the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry. Hundreds of Shiites have also been killed in attacks since the shrine bombing.