Dozens of Iraqi Soldiers Found Slain

In the deadliest ambush yet on Iraq’s armed forces, guerrillas killed dozens of unarmed Iraqi soldiers, many apparently forced onto their stomachs and shot execution-style along a remote eastern highway near the Iranian border, Iraqi officials said Sunday.

Estimates of the death toll ranged from three dozen to 51.

Iraqi officials said gunmen disguised in Iraqi military uniforms set up a phony checkpoint and stopped the U.S.-trained soldiers as they rode home in a convoy of minibuses Saturday evening. The troops, who had just completed boot camp in Kirkush, were starting home leave, officials said.

The young recruits were pulled off the buses, forced to lie prone in rows of 12, ordered to place their hands on their heads and methodically executed, Iraqi police said. Some apparently tried to run away.

“Most of them were shot in their backs and the back of their heads,” said Abdul-Hassan Mandali, the local mayor.

In an interview with the Arabic satellite channel Al Arabiya, the deputy governor of Diyala province, Aquil Hamid Adili, said he believed the ambush was an inside job.

“There was probably collusion among the soldiers or other groups,” he said. “Otherwise, the gunmen would not have gotten the information about the soldiers’ departure from their training camp and that they were unarmed.”

A website used by Islamic extremists announced that a group loyal to Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi had claimed responsibility for the killings. The message posted by the group claimed that it had killed 48 “apostates” in the attack. “The mujahedin killed them all, stole two vehicles and the salaries they had just received from their masters,” said the statement. Its authenticity could not be verified.

On Sunday, an early morning mortar attack on a military base near Baghdad airport killed a U.S. State Department officer.

Ed Seitz, an agent with the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, was asleep at the time of the attack about 5 a.m. at Camp Victory; an unspecified number of other people were wounded in the explosion.

Seitz’s death was announced by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who was traveling in Asia.

“Ed was a brave American, dedicated to his country and to a brighter future of the people of Iraq,” Powell said. “Ed’s death is a tragic loss for me personally, and for all his colleagues at the Department of State.”

Details of the Iraqi recruits’ killings remained unavailable -- and in dispute -- Sunday, more than 24 hours after the estimated time of the attack.

Iraqi police reported that as many as 51 soldiers were killed, but U.S. military sources placed the death toll at three dozen.

U.S. sources said the incident occurred about 60 miles south of Baqubah in Wasit province, an area patrolled by Polish and Ukrainian troops.

Iraqi officials, however, said the killings occurred roughly 95 miles northeast of Baghdad, in the turbulent province of Diyala. Police in that area, particularly in the provincial capital, Baqubah, have been targets of assassinations, car bombs and drive-by shootings. Eleven police recruits were recently shot dead there while riding in a minibus.

In Saturday’s attack, most of the young recruits wore civilian clothes and were headed to southern Iraq. They were identified by their military IDs, said Subhi Beyran, police chief of the nearby town of Mandali.

Local villagers called police after hearing gunfire sometime between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday.

Iraqi government spokeswoman Maha Malik said witnesses told investigators that insurgents attacked two vehicles with rocket-propelled grenades. The shells of two burned-out minibuses were found at the scene. Witnesses told police that the attackers drove away in one or more buses.

On Sunday, the bodies were driven by truck to an Iraqi national guard facility in Mandali, where they were placed on long sheets for identification. Onlookers wept as the corpses, in civilian clothing stained with blood, were lined up.

Most of the soldiers came from poor families in the primarily Shiite Muslim cities of Basra, Amarah and Nasiriya. An Iraqi security official said, “It appears that they were ambushed by a large, well-organized force with good intelligence.”

Evidence at the scene suggested that about a dozen soldiers attempted to flee before they were gunned down.

It was unclear Sunday why the soldiers were unarmed -- whether they were not issued weapons or not allowed to carry them when off duty. Many Iraqi army and national guardsmen are prohibited from carrying weapons because their superiors fear the arms might fall into insurgents’ hands.

Members of the Iraqi armed forces are frequent targets of insurgents, who see them as collaborators with the U.S.-led coalition. On July 28, a car bomb killed 68 people outside a police recruiting center in Baqubah.

Also on Sunday, radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr, whose followers began disarming two weeks ago under a fledgling peace agreement, raised doubts about the future of that deal when he pledged his support for insurgents in Fallouja.

“I am ready to provide a helping hand for you, my mujahedin brothers in Fallouja in our beloved Iraq, for I condemn or denounce all violations and attacks on all Iraqi cities,” he said in a statement. “I am ready to interfere if you wish, so choose your road and I am with you hand in hand, but I hope that your city and all Iraqi cities avoid the war, for the enemy has no mercy.”

U.S. Marine Corps jets continued their monthlong assault on Fallouja, pounding suspected insurgent hide-outs and weapons storage sites. A cloud of smoke rose from the north side of the city at noon, when bombs leveled a building allegedly used by Zarqawi’s fighters. The bombs triggered a second explosion, in what was believed to be a store of weapons and ammunition. Witnesses said six Iraqis died in the strike.

A coalition soldier was killed in a separate attack near Karbala. An official statement said insurgents attacked a convoy from 1st Brigade Combat Team. The statement did not give the soldier’s nationality. It said three other soldiers, who were wounded, were taken to the Polish Military Hospital in Karbala.

Special correspondent Faris Mehdawi contributed to this report; Associated Press was used in compiling it.