BAGHDAD, Iraq – In the deadliest ambush yet on Iraq’s forces, guerrillas killed dozens of unarmed Iraqi soldiers, many apparently forced onto their stomachs and shot in the head along a remote eastern highway near the Iranian border, Iraqi officials said Sunday.
There was confusion over precise figures, although the Iraqi National Guard said 48 troops and three drivers were killed.
A claim of responsibility posted on an Islamist Web site attributed the attack to followers of Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Iraqi officials said gunmen disguised in Iraqi military uniforms stopped the U.S-trained soldiers as they rode home in a convoy of minibuses Saturday evening. The soldiers, who had just completed boot camp in Kirkush and were starting home leave, had rolled up to a phony checkpoint near the Iranian border just after nightfall, officials said.
The young recruits were pulled off the buses, forced to lie prone in rows of 12, ordered to place their hands on their heads and methodically executed, according to an account by Iraqi police. Some apparently tried to run away.
“Most of them were shot in their backs and the back of their heads,” said Abdul-Hassan Mandali, mayor of the county in which the men were killed.
Thirty-seven bodies were found Sunday on the ground with their hands behind their backs and shot, and 12 others were found in a burned bus, Interior Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul-Rahman said. Some officials quoted witnesses as saying insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at one bus.
It was unclear Sunday why the soldiers were unarmed – whether they did not have weapons or because they were not allowed to carry them when they were off duty. Many Iraqi army and national guardsmen are prohibited from carrying weapons because their superiors fear they might fall in insurgents’ hands.
Iraqi police and soldiers have been increasingly targeted by insurgents, mostly with car bombs and mortar shells. However, the fact that the insurgents were able to strike at so many unarmed soldiers in such a remote region suggested the guerrillas may have had advance word on the soldiers’ travel.
“There was probably collusion among the soldiers or other groups,” Diyala’s deputy Gov. Aqil Hamid al-Adili told Al-Arabiya television. “Otherwise, the gunmen would not have gotten the information about the soldiers’ departure from their training camp and that they were unarmed.”
A Web site used by Islamic extremists announced that militants loyal to al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the killings. The message posted by the group calling itself al-Qaida in Iraq claimed that it had killed 48 “apostates” in the attack.
“The mujahedeen killed them all, stole two vehicles and the salaries they had just received from their masters,” said the statement. Its authenticity could not be verified.
Other developments
* U.S. diplomat Edward Seitz was killed when a rebel-fired rocket or mortar shell crashed into the trailer where he was sleeping at an American base near the Baghdad airport. Seitz was believed to be the first U.S. diplomat killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.
* Hardline clerics in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah said Sunday they were not responsible for kidnapping British aid worker Margaret Hassan, the 59-year-old director of CARE International in Iraq, and appealed for her release.
* The Army has denied most of the thousands of compensation claims Iraqis have made against the U.S. military, determining that combat accounted for most of the deaths, injuries and property damage, The Dayton Daily News of Ohio reported Sunday. The newspaper’s analysis showed just one in four claims resulted in some type of payment.
U.S. military deaths
The latest identification reported by the U.S. military of personnel who recently died in Iraq:
Marine Lance Cpl. Jonathan E. Gadsden, 21, Charleston, S.C.; died Friday of injuries received in Anbar province on Aug. 21; assigned to the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
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