Al-Zarqawi group massacres 50 soldiers

THE bodies of about 50 Iraqi soldiers were discovered yesterday after apparently having been killed in an ambush by insurgents.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad group later claimed responsibility for the ambush, according to a website.

The grisly find was a further setback to coalition forces seeking to impose stability on Iraq in advance of planned elections in January. It came as it was revealed that an American State Department security official had been killed in an attack on a US base near Baghdad airport.

The bodies of the Iraqi government troops were found on a remote road in the east of the country, the authorities in Baghdad announced. Interior Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul-Rahman said the victims were believed to have been killed about sundown yesterday on a road 95 miles east of Baghdad near the Iranian border, as they returned home on leave.

Witnesses said insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at about two vehicles carrying the unarmed troops, and a local police commander said it appeared they had been ordered to lie in rows on the ground before being shot.

Diyala province’s deputy governor Aqil Hamid al-Adili told Al-Arabiya TV he believed the ambush was an inside job.

Meanwhile, the US Embassy in Baghdad announced that State Department agent Ed Seitz died and a number of other people were injured yesterday morning in a mortar or rocket attack on Camp Victory, the headquarters of the US-led coalition’s ground forces command.

Seitz was the first American diplomat known to have been killed since last year’s US-led invasion.

A Bulgarian soldier serving with US-led multinational forces was killed and three others wounded when a car bomb exploded near their convoy in the southern city of Kerbala.

Gunmen also shot dead a Turkish truck driver in northern Iraq, police said, a day after two other truckers from Turkey were killed near the city of Mosul.

Elsewhere, US warplanes pounded targets in Fallujah, the toughest guerrilla stronghold yesterday, killing five people, witnesses said. Hospital officials said the dead were civilians.

The US military said a “precision” strike had destroyed a known enemy command and control post in northern Falluja.

US forces have stepped up air strikes and other attacks in the city west of Baghdad in a campaign they say is aimed at insurgents and foreign fighters led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has a $25 million US bounty on his head.

Meanwhile in Britain, a series of senior Tories lined up to attack Prime Minister Tony Blair for his handling of the conflict and its aftermath, with former Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine accusing him of lying to take the country into war.

Mr Blair’s conduct of the conflict was criticised by four senior members of the previous Tory administration, including former prime minister John Major.

Their broadside came as kidnapped Iraq aid chief Ms Margaret Hassan, who has Irish, British and Iraqi citizenship, entered her sixth day in captivity after urging the British government not to move Black Watch soldiers to the capital.

Meanwhile, Gunmen are reported to have abducted a seven-year-old Lebanese boy and are demanding a ransom for his release.

Mohammed Hamad, the son of Abdel-Ghani Hamad, who has lived in Iraq for 30 years, was kidnapped two days ago on his way home from school in the Diyala province east of Baghdad, the Lebanese National News Agency said.