Inside Job Eyed In Iraq Massacre
Iraqi officials suspect that about 50 U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers slain 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 claim was posted Sunday on an Islamist Web site but its authenticity could not be confirmed.
The 50 unarmed Iraqi soldiers were killed on their way home after completing a training course at the Kirkush military camp northeast of Baghdad when their buses were stopped Saturday evening by rebels about 95 miles east of Baghdad, Interior Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul-Rahman said.
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, officials said Sunday.
In other developments:
There was confusion over the precise number of Iraqi soldiers killed in the ambush, although the Iraqi National Guard said 48 troops and three drivers were killed.
Abdul-Rahman said 37 bodies were found Sunday on the ground with their hands behind their backs, shot execution-style. Twelve others were found in a burned bus, he said. Some officials quoted witnesses as saying 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," Gen. Walid al-Azzawi, commander of the Diyala provincial police, said, adding that 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 by insurgents, 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.
"There was probably collusion among the soldiers or other groups," Diyala's deputy Gov. Aqil Hamid al-Adili told Al-Arabiya television. "Otherwise, the gunmen would not have gotten the information about the soldiers' departure from their training camp and that they were unarmed."
Last week, a U.S. defense official said in Washington that 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.
During a surge in fighting in April, large numbers of Iraqi soldiers deserted or fought for the enemy.
The extent of rebel infiltration is unknown. However, it raises concern about the American strategy of handing over more responsibility to Iraqi security forces so U.S. forces could be drawn down.
In other violence, insurgents launched two near-simultaneous bomb attacks on a government compound and a military convoy in the northern city of Mosul, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
Three people inside the compound were killed and another one was injured in the morning blast, provincial government spokesman Hazem Jalawi said.
Elsewhere, rebels and U.S. forces battled in the central town of Ramadi, and hospital officials reported three Iraqis were killed. Insurgents bombed one American security patrol and ambushed a separate convoy with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and an improvised explosive, the U.S. military said. No Americans were injured.
About 150 Iraqis rallied Monday in front of the Baghdad offices of CARE International to demand the release of aid worker Margaret Hassan, its Iraqi director who was abducted Oct. 20.
No group has acknowledged holding her but a videotape broadcast last week by Al-Jazeera showed a terrified Hassan begging for her life and pleading with British Prime Minister Tony Blair to remove British soldiers from Iraq.
A bomb hidden near the Baghdad home of Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari was discovered and defused Sunday, police said. In July, gunmen had opened fire on a car belonging to Zebari, an ethnic Kurd, killing one official and wounding two others. He was not in the vehicle at the time.