MOSUL, Jan 14: Insurgents killed at least 26 people across Iraq on Sunday and police found 40 corpses in Baghdad of men shot dead execution-style in apparent sectarian attacks, security officials said.

Gunmen killed 17 people in a series of shootings in Iraq's main northern city of Mosul, a police officer said.

Police Major Mohammed Ahmed said the 17 dead included a dentist, a civil servant, a student and an officer of the former Iraqi army.

Nine people were killed in attacks elsewhere in Iraq.

Among them were four Iraqi army soldiers who were killed in clashes with insurgents in Madain, on the southern outskirt of Baghdad, police said.

One person was killed and six wounded when a Katyusha rocket was fired into the northeast Baghdad neighbourhood of Mustansiriyah, a security official and a medic said.

Another person was killed and six others wounded in a roadside bombing in central Baghdad.

South of the capital, three people were killed near the town of Musayyib when gunmen opened fire randomly on a group of civilians in the village of Tunis, according to local police.

Police in Baghdad also found 40 corpses of men shot in the head, a method used by rival armed gangs to kill people in the ongoing Shia-Sunni sectarian conflict.

Dozens of corpses are found daily in Baghdad of men killed in the bloodshed that has rocked the capital since it broke out in February 2006 following the bombing of a prominent Shia shrine.

The defence ministry said Iraqi troops arrested at least 82 militants, including dozens linked to Al Qaeda, in a series of operations across Iraq.

“The army arrested 50 terrorists, many linked to Al Qaeda, in Diyala province,” a ministry statement said.

It said the security forces also found 2,000 Katyusha rockets during the operations in Diyala.

The confessionally divided province northeast of Baghdad is currently the second most dangerous in Iraq after the capital itself.

The ministry said “32 terrorists were also captured and seven cars full of explosives seized from Abu Ghraib”, on the western outskirts of Baghdad.

The ministry however did not reveal when those arrests were made.—AFP