Iraqis suspect executed soldiers were set up

Iraqi officials suspect that 50 US trained Iraqi soldiers murdered by insurgents – many of them execution-style – may have been set up by rebel infiltrators in their ranks.

Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s group claimed responsibility for the weekend attack, the deadliest ambush of the 18-month insurgency.

The unarmed Iraqi soldiers were killed on their way home after completing a training course when their buses were stopped by rebels about 95 miles east of Baghdad.

Some accounts by police said the rebels were dressed in Iraqi military uniforms. The insurgents forced many of the soldiers to lie down on the ground and then shot them in the head.

Interior Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul-Rahman said 37 bodies were found on the ground with their hands behind their backs, shot execution-style. Twelve others were found in a burned bus, he said. Witnesses said insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at one bus.

“After inspection, we found out that they were shot after being ordered to lay down on the earth,” said police commander General Walid al-Azzawi. The bodies were laid out in four rows, with 12 bodies in each row.

The killing of so many Iraqi soldiers in such an apparently sure-footed operation reinforced American and Iraqi suspicions that the country’s security services have been infiltrated by insurgents.

Iraqi police and soldiers have been increasingly targeted, 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 arrangements.

“There was probably collusion among the soldiers or other groups,” Diyala’s deputy Governor Aqil Hamid al-Adili said. “Otherwise, the gunmen would not have got the information about the soldiers’ departure from their training camp and that they were unarmed.”

Last week, a US defence official said some members of the Iraqi security services have developed sympathies and contacts with the guerrillas. In other instances, infiltrators were sent to join the security services, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the ambush on a website, saying “God enabled the Mujahedeen to kill all” the soldiers and “seize two cars and money”.

Al-Zarqawi and his movement are believed to be behind dozens of attacks on Iraqi and U.S.-led forces and kidnappings of foreigners. Many of those hostages, including Briton Ken Bigley have been beheaded – some purportedly by al-Zarqawi himself.

The US has put a €19.4m bounty on al-Zarqawi – the same amount as for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

In Iraq today, insurgents launched two near-simultaneous bomb attacks hitting a government compound and a military convoy in the northern city of Mosul. Three people inside the compound were killed and another one was injured in the morning blast.

A suicide car bomber attacked a US convoy in Khaldiyah, a town 50 miles west of Baghdad, destroying at least two Humvees. Police said there were American casualties.

In Baghdad, a car bomb targeting an Australian military convoy exploded near the Australian embassy, killing three Iraqis and wounding eight others, including three Australian soldiers.