Militants slaughter 11 Iraqi soldiers

Insurgents slaughtered 11 Iraqi soldiers, beheading one, then shooting the others execution-style, and declared on an Islamic militant website that Iraqi fighters would avenge “the blood” of women and children killed in US strikes on the guerrilla stronghold of Fallujah.

The wave of foreigner kidnappings claimed another victim – a Polish woman in her 60s who is married to an Iraqi. Her captors demanded that Poland withdraw its 2,400 soldiers and that the US-led coalition free all Iraqi women held at Abu Ghraib prison.