The bound bodies of dozens more torture victims were found in Baghdad in the past day, officials said today.
In all, police retrieved 49 bodies in the 24 hours to this morning, most shot in the head after being tied up and tortured, a senior Interior Ministry official said.
That took the body count in the city for three days to 129, he said.
The US military acknowledged a rise in the murder rate this week, despite a month-old security crackdown in the capital for which Washington sent in thousands of extra troops.
Six US soldiers were killed yesterday, four around Baghdad, including two in a suicide car bomb attack that also wounded 25 Americans.
Parliamentary leaders are due to meet tomorrow to try to break a deadlock over proposed legislation to grant sweeping autonomy to new regions within a federal state structure.
Shias are set on introducing a bill on Tuesday to define the mechanisms of the federalism laid out in the US-sponsored constitution. Many want to create a big, autonomous region in the oil-rich south, similar to that run by the ethnic Kurds in the north, who broke from Saddam Hussein's Iraq 16 years ago.
But Saddam's Sunni Arab minority in the centre are threatening to boycott parliament and want instead to amend the constitution to ensure that central government prevails.