Iraq: Gunmen kidnap and kill villages

Gunmen dressed in Iraqi army uniforms swept into a village south of Baghdad this morning, kidnapping 13 civilians and killing at least 11 of them, police said.

The attack occurred around 5am in Imam village, a predominantly Shiite town about 50 miles south of the Iraqi capital.

About two hours after the abduction, police found eleven bodies with gunshot wounds to the head and chest, and they were believed to be those who had been kidnapped, police and the Iraqi army said.

An Iraqi army spokesman acknowledged that the gunmen wore Iraqi army uniforms and drove military vehicles, but said they were not government soldiers.

“We did not have any duties in that area, and those vehicles do not belong to us,” said 1st Lt. Murad al-Maamouri. “They are terrorists of course.”

Al-Maamouri said Iraqi soldiers were patrolling the area on foot, searching for the other two captives.

Three US soldiers were killed in fighting in Iraq’s western Anbar province, the military said today.

The soldiers, who were assigned to Multi-National Force – West, died Thursday from wounds sustained while conducting combat operations in the insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.

The deaths raised to at least 3,117 members of the US military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

A US airstrike killed eight suspected terrorists and destroyed a building south of Baghdad, the US military said today.

The attack occurred last night in Arab Jabour, a mostly Sunni Muslim suburb south of Baghdad.

American troops came under “heavy enemy fire during a raid targeting al-Qaida in Iraq terrorists and foreign fighter facilitators,” the US military said in a statement.

Coalition aircraft swooped in, dropping precision bombs on a building where eight suspects had barricaded themselves, the statement said.

All eight were killed. No US forces or Iraqi civilians were injured in the attack, the military said.