IRAQI officials discovered 50 bodies today dumped in an agricultural area south of Baghdad.

The bodies — many of them blindfolded, with their hands bound — were found in the predominantly Shi'ite village of Khamissiya outside the city of Hillah, 60 miles to the south of Baghdad, said military spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan Ibrahim. They all had gunshot wounds.

He said that an investigation was under way to determine the identities of the dead as well as the circumstances of the killings

The dead, all men, were between the ages of 25 and 40. 

It appeared that they had been killed a few days earlier and then dumped in the remote area, said a local police officer and a medical official. 

Most of the bodies had bullet wounds in either the head or the chest.

Sectarian tensions have soared recently in light of the military advances and targeted slaughter by Islamic State forces against non-Sunnis, recalling the days of 2006-7 when Sunni and Shi'ite paramilitary groups engaged in sectarian massacres.

The area south of Hillah is predominantly Shi'ite, but there is a belt of Sunni-majority towns north of the city. 

Two car bombs exploded yesterday in the predominantly Shi'ite town of Mahaweel near Hillah, killing two people and wounding seven.

• Under-fire Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki retreated further into his Shiite bunker yesterday, when he demanded that the country’s Kurds give up all land recently occupied, including the city of Kirkuk. He attacked the Kurdish autonomous zone as a “headquarters for Islamic State, Ba'ath, al-Qaida and the terrorists.”