Over 1,000 killed in April sectarian violence in Baghdad

"We received a report from the morgue about the deaths in Baghdad that 1,091 people were killed between April 1 and 30," Talabani was quoted as saying in a statement issued by his office.

He said "we are shocked and angry at the daily reports of unidentified bodies being discovered and of people killed on the basis of their identity."

Iraq has been engulfed in a tit-for-tat sectarian violence since the bombing of a revered Shia shrine in the northern town of Samarra on February 22.

Thousands of bodies have been discovered across Iraq, mostly of Sunni Arabs, killed in Shia reprisals after the Samarra bombing.

The violence has raged amid the power vacuum as nearly five months after the December elections for the country's first permanent post-Saddam era parliament, Iraq is still without a government.