The bodies of 10 young men shot in the head or chest were found on Thursday near a disused factory in the Iraqi capital, security and morgue official said.

The men, whose corpses were recovered close to the former pharmaceuticals plant at Mahamel near the Shiite Sadr City district, were aged between 17 and 25 and had been dead for up to two days, an army source said.

Summary executions were commonplace in Baghdad at the height of the Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict in 2006 and 2007, when many thousands of people were killed in cold blood.

But this was the first time in several years that such a large number of bodies had been found in one place.

Iraq car bombings kill 6
Baghdad (AFP) Sept 18, 2013 - Three car bombings in Iraq killed at least six people and wounded 45 on Wednesday, security and medical officials said.

Two car bombs exploded in central Baghdad, killing four and wounding 15, and in Tuz Khurmatu on the edge of Iraqi Kurdistan two people were killed and 30 wounded when a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle.

In Mosul, also in northern Iraq, four soldiers were wounded in another explosion.

On Tuesday, at least 34 people were killed in Iraq, among them 26 by a wave of car bombs in the capital.