BAGHDAD, March 27 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi police patrols found bodies of nine victims strangled to death in southern Baghdad on Monday, an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua.

   "Our patrols found the bodies in the Amil district early in the morning," the source said on condition of anonymity.

   The bodies bore signs of torture and the victims seemed to be strangled to death, he added.

   A police patrol, which was ordered to take the bodies to the morgue, was attacked by a roadside bomb, which caused some casualties among the policemen, he said, adding that there was no immediate word on the exact casualties.

   A wave of sectarian reprisal attacks between Iraqi Shiite and Sunni communities has swept across the country in the wake of a bomb attack that destroyed a major Shiite shrine in northern Iraq on Feb. 22. Enditem