ABU QADDUM lays out the pictures of mutilated bodies dredged from the Tigris River like a player dealing cards.

Some had their hands cut off, others are headless or burnt. Another was strangled, with his tongue lolling out. He thinks one bloated, slime-covered corpse might be his younger brother.

The shocking images come from Iraq’s new killing fields — the small town of Madain just 20 miles from Baghdad...

...People were too scared to go to market for fear of being seized. At night families stood guard in two-hour shifts. Six weeks ago Abu Qaddum’s brother went to find a doctor for his sick wife and was never seen again.

The guerrillas blew up a mosque and posted notices saying that Shias should leave town or die. The Shia political parties started a press campaign — but it was dismissed by the Interior Ministry, whose officials said that the whole affair was a tribal feud.

When Iraqi troops finally moved in they found no sign of the horror. They asked through loudspeakers for witnesses to show them where the terrorists and their hostages were. The Shias were too terrified to come forward, knowing that the troops could be gone in a week.

The story was dismissed as exaggeration. Then the first bodies were found. Some had broken free of concrete slabs to which they had been tied before they were thrown in the river.

A distraught father looking for his son heard about this and hired a Baghdad diver to investigate. The diver emerged, filled with horror, saying that the riverbed was thick with bodies. So far 57 have been found but Abu Qaddum — now a refugee living in another city under an assumed name — says that local police are too afraid to retrieve any more. Locals want American troops to secure the area and send divers down for the rest. US embassy and Iraqi government spokesmen told The Times that they were investigating the affair.