World

10 Shiites Killed In Iraq Bus Ambush

November 11, 2006 / 2:14 PM EST / CBS/AP

Sunni gunmen ambushed a convoy of minibuses at a fake checkpoint on the dangerous highway south of Baghdad, killing 10 Shiite passengers and kidnapping about 50. Across the country at least 52 other people were killed in violence or were found dead, five of them decapitated Iraqi soldiers.

Police said the mass kidnapping and killing was near the volatile town of Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad in the so-called Triangle of Death.

Shiite Muslims, a minority in that district, have routinely come under attack from Sunni insurgents who control the territory. The highway passing through the region from Baghdad leads to Najaf, the holiest Shiite city in Iraq. Shiite pilgrims have become a favorite target of Sunni gunmen, although it was not immediately known where the victims of Saturday night's assault were headed.

Sectarian revenge killings in Baghdad and the mixed Sunni-Shiite regions surrounding the capital have reached civil war proportions. Morgues across a wide sweep of the center of the country are full as Shiite militiamen and death squads range through the region killing Sunnis.

The Shiites are falling in large numbers as well in attacks from a growing network of Sunni insurgent groups, including radical organizations such as al Qaeda in Iraq. The U.S. military has admitted in recent weeks that its mission to pacify the capital has not met expectations. And now the problem appears to spreading outward at an extraordinarily rapid rate.

In other developments:

Slovakian officials say a Slovak and a Polish solider were killed by a roadside bomb. Slovakia's prime minister says his country will pull its troops out of Iraq in February.

Some National Guard combat brigades could be sent back to Iraq for a second tour of duty, says the guard's top general, Lieutenant General Steven Blum. The Pentagon's plan would force it to depart from a previous decision not to deploy reserves for more than a cumulative 24 months in Iraq. For some units, a second tour would mean they would likely exceed that two-year maximum.

President Bush and his national security team will meet Monday with the bipartisan Iraq Study Group trying to devise a new course for the war in Iraq. Robert Gates, picked by Mr. Bush to succeed Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary, has been a member of the group. He is resigning and will not take part in Monday's meetings. Lawrence Eagleburger, the secretary of state at the end of President George H.W. Bush's term, will replace him.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he will have a video conference with the Iraq Survey Group on Tuesday. A spokeswoman for Blair said she could not speculate on what he might say on Tuesday. But the Guardian newspaper reports that he will urge the White House to open talks with Iran and Syria regarding Iraq.

One-third of the way into November, the number of U.S. troop deaths in Iraq now stands at 26 for the month. The military today announced the deaths of three soldiers and two Marines. Two of the soldiers died when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad. Another was killed when a patrol was hit by a bomb buried in the road in a town about 140 miles northwest of the capital. One Marine died from wounds suffered in fighting in Anbar province, and the other Marine died from what are described as "non-hostile causes" during operations in Anbar.

President Bush gave the nation's highest award to a fallen Marine who shared his birthday with the Marine Corps. The president has awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor to Cpl. Jason Dunham, a native of western New York. During a dedication ceremony for the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Va., Mr. Bush said Cpl. Dunham "showed the world what it means to be a Marine." President Bush explained how Dunham heroically threw himself on an enemy grenade and saved two others in his squad after a Marine convoy was ambushed in April 2004 near the Syrian border in Iraq.

In all, 30,000 new recruits come into the Marine Corps each year — and almost all will end up in Iraq. The recruits undergo 13 weeks of intense physical and mental training to teach them honor and values. But, as the marines now under investigation for possible war crimes exemplify, the training might not be enough to prepare recruits for the mental and ethical challenges they will encounter in the field. David Martin reports.

Iraq's health minister estimates 150,000 Iraqis have died in the war, reports McCormick. That's three times higher than previous estimates, but nowhere near the figure of 650,000 published recently in the British medical journal Lancet. Still, there has been no official count, and there may never be accurate numbers.

The spiraling violence coincides with increasingly strident demands from the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for American forces to pull back into bases and leave Iraq's cities and towns under the control of his military and police forces. But the highly partisan troops and police are believed to be involved in sectarian killings themselves or to look the other way, allowing Shiite death squads and militias to operate unmolested.

In the capital, the United States military offered a $50,000 reward for an Iraqi-American soldier kidnapped nearly three weeks ago.

Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie, a 41-year-old translator from Ann Arbor, Michigan, was handcuffed and driven away by gunmen of a rogue Shiite militia while visiting his Iraqi wife and her family on Oct. 23.

Al-Taayie's uncle last week said he had received through an intermediary a demand for $250,000 from the kidnappers, but there was no word on further communications.

There were no reported deaths among America's 152,000 service men and women in Iraq on Saturday. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq, oversaw a Veterans Day ceremony at which 75 members of the armed forces from 33 countries were sworn in as American citizens, CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports.

In Baghdad, eight people died and at least 38 were wounded when two bombs hidden under parked cars exploded among noontime shoppers in downtown Baghdad's Hafidh al-Qadhi square. Police and a medical worker said at least 38 others were injured in the explosion at the formerly bustling area on the eastern bank of the Tigris River.

Baghdad police 1st Lt. Thayer Mahmud said his men found 25 corpses dumped in several parts of the capital in the 24 hours from 6 p.m. Friday.

A Samarra police captain, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution, said the city morgue had received the beheaded bodies of five soldiers who were kidnapped last week in the Meshahda area, 20 miles north of the capital.