BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's Interior Ministry said yesterday that for the first time it has brought charges of torture against police officers, while authorities reported finding the bodies of 15 apparent victims of sectarian death squads that are believed to infiltrated the police force.Also yesterday, Saddam Hussein returned to court for his genocide trial, two days after being sentenced to hang for war crimes in the 1980s killings of 148 people in the town of Dujail. Traffic returned to the streets of Baghdad after a round-the-clock curfew was lifted from many of the most dangerous Iraqi region. The ban was largely successful in heading off feared sectarian violence after the verdict was announced Sunday.

The names of the accused officers were being withheld, but spokesman Brig. Abdel-Karim Khalaf said a general among the group already had received administrative punishment and would face further charges in court.

Others charged and removed from their jobs included 19 officers, 20 non-commissioned officers and 17 patrolmen or civilian employees of the ministry, he said.

"All of these people will stand trial and the court will decide their fate," Khalaf said.

Torture is considered widespread among the poorly trained force which has suffered heavy losses at the hands of Sunni insurgents, Shiite militiamen and criminal gangs.

Khalaf said the incidents of torture had been recorded at a prison in eastern Baghdad called Site No. 4. He declined to give details about specific abuses or what sentences the policemen could receive if found guilty.

A witness in Saddam's second trial over the Operation Anfal crackdown against Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s told the court that he and other men from his village were shot after surrendering to Iraqi soldiers who'd promised that Saddam had issued an amnesty.

"When they fired in our direction, we all fell to the ground," said Qahar Khalil Mohammed, who said he was wounded but survived.

Saddam showed none of the bravado of two days ago, when he shouted "Long live the people and death to their enemies" as another court sentenced him to the gallows. Smiling faintly and dressed in a black suit with white shirt, he found his way quietly to his seat among the other six defendants.

The Anfal trial will continue while an appeal in the Dujail case is under way. The prosecution says about 180,000 Kurds, most of them civilians, were killed in the crackdown in 1987-88.

The US military said a Baghdad-based soldier was killed by a roadside bomb on Monday, bringing the death toll among US troops this month to 19. One British soldier also was killed in an attack Monday on a base in the southern city of Basra, the first British casualty this month.

The US military said this month's casualties included two lieutenant colonels, among the highest ranking soldiers to die in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.

Lt. Col. Eric J. Kruger, 40, was killed last Thursday by a roadside bomb along with Lt. Col. Paul J. Finken, 40, and Staff Sgt. Joseph A. Gage, 28. All three men were riding in the same Humvee in eastern Baghdad.

Fighting was also reported between gunmen and US soldiers in the western city of Ramadi, a center of pro-Saddam sentiment among the former Sunni ruling class. Police and the military said they had no word on casualties.

The 15 bodies of the unidentified torture victims were found floating in the Tigris River in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad, Police Lt. Mohammed al-Shamari said. All had been blindfolded and bound at the wrists and ankles, before being shot in the head and chest.

Shiite death squads are generally thought to be behind such killings, hundreds of which have been recorded in Baghdad alone since the bombing of a major Shiite shrine in February ignited the explosion of sectarian revenge killings.

Some officers on the Shiite-dominated police force are accused of abetting the violence by allowing the gunmen to violate curfews and pass through checkpoints. Such concerns were underscored by the discovery of a police torture chamber in Baghdad last year, along with the apparent complicity of police in a mass kidnapping of Sunni workers that prompted authorities to take an entire police brigade out of service for retraining.

Officials say they plan to eventually retrain all 26 national police battalions — the Interior Ministry's paramilitary units — and weed out those suspected of ties to sectarian militias and criminal gangs.

Meanwhile, Iraq's main Sunni political party issued a statement accusing "criminal militias" of being behind the torching of two Sunni mosques in western Baghdad on Sunday.

"We demand the government at least issue a statement condemning such crimes, as it does when other places are attacked," the Iraqi Islamic Party said.

"The government should be the government of all Iraqis, regardless of their religion or sect," the statement said. It said the mosques had never been used to store weapons or shelter criminals or insurgents.

The government on Monday reached out to disaffected Sunnis in hopes of enticing them away from the insurgency, which has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and is responsible for the vast majority of US casualties. The Supreme National Commission for de-Baathification has prepared a draft law that could see thousands of members of Baath party reinstated in their jobs, the commission's head told The Associated Press.

The amendments, which have yet to be sent to parliament for ratification, are in harmony with a 24-point national reconciliation plan that was announced in June by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, in which he called for reviewing the de-Baathification programme, al-Lami said.

The United States dissolved and banned the Baath party in May 2003, a month after toppling Saddam. The US later softened its stance, inviting former high-level officers from the disbanded military to join the security forces.

The former top US administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, also allowed thousands of teachers who were Baathists to return to work. He conceived of the so-called de-Baathification effort but later found it had gutted key ministries and the military with no replacement personnel among the Iraqi work force and educated elite.

About 1.5 million of Iraq's 27 million people belonged to the Baath party — formally known as the Baath Arab Socialist Party — when Saddam was ousted. Most said they joined for professional, not ideological, reasons.