Fears for policemen's lives

There were fears tonight for the lives of 31 Iraqi policemen who were kidnapped as they returned from a training camp in Jordan.

They were abducted on Sunday when gunmen stormed the hotel they were staying at in the town of Rutba, near the Jordanian border, said a police spokesman.

A policeman, who said he was beaten but not kidnapped, said around 20 armed men attacked the hotel, covering the captives’ heads with black bags and tying their hands before dragging them away.

The gunmen took mobile phones, cameras and documents from the unarmed policemen, he said

Insurgents have repeatedly targeted new members of the Iraqi security forces that the US military has been training.

On October 23, gunmen ambushed a group of Iraqi soldiers returning home from a training course on a road east of Baghdad. Around 50 of the soldiers – who were unarmed – were killed execution-style with gunshots to the back of the head.

On October 16, nine Iraqi policemen returning from a training course in Jordan were ambushed and killed on their way home to Karbala.

An official at the Jordan International Police Training Centre, the US run desert camp training Iraqi police cadets, said the latest batch of 1,440 Iraqi policemen concluded training on November 10.

While some returned to Iraq before the Eid holiday, which began last Thursday, at least 800 headed to the borders on their way back home overland yesterday, he said.

Elsewhere, a suicide car bomber rammed a US convoy north of Baghdad, killing 10 people today.

The attacks were part of a wave of violence that has swept across Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland during the US offensive to retake the insurgent bastion of Fallujah.

The violence has made November one of the bloodiest months of the Iraqi insurgency.

The American death toll in the war in Iraq reached 1,206 today.

The car bombing came during clashes in Beiji, 155 miles north of the capital. The vehicle hit a convoy and exploded, then US soldiers opened fire.

Ten people were killed in the blast and nine others, including three US soldiers, were wounded.

Beiji is the site of Iraq’s largest oil refinery and a major power station.

In Fallujah, heavy machine-gun fire and explosions rang out as US Marines hunted fighters still in the turbulent city. American forced battled insurgents who officers said had sneaked back into the city by swimming across the Euphrates River.

On Saturday, the US military had declared the one-time rebel stronghold completely occupied but not subdued after a nearly week-long battle. But pockets of insurgents remain, and allied forces are still fighting.

“Even as we start Fallujah’s reconstruction, the fighting is continuing, as you can hear,” said Captain Alex Henegar, a civil affairs officer.

The US military said it was expanding its investigation into the fatal shooting of a wounded man by a Marine in a Fallujah mosque over the weekend. The investigation will also look into whether other wounded men in the mosque were also shot and killed.

The probe was prompted by videotaped pool pictures by NBC that showed the shooting during an operation by the 1st Marine Regiment in the mosque on Saturday.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is “very concerned” about the shooting, his office said.

American and Iraqi authorities have been trying to stem outrage over the shootings among Iraqis, particularly the Sunni Arab minority, and Arabs across the region.

US ambassador John Negroponte expressed regret over the shooting but said it should not undermine US efforts to remove guerrillas from the city.