http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/ ... index.html
CNN wrote:BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi authorities have discovered the bodies of 44 Iraqi soldiers and four drivers after they were ambushed and killed overnight near the Iraq-Iran border, an Iraqi military commander said Sunday.
A group led by suspected terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- Unification and Jihad -- claimed responsibility Sunday for the massacre. The claim appeared on an Arabic Web site, and CNN has not confirmed its authenticity.
Col. Jassem Mohammed Alaiwa, commander of the Iraqi National Guards, said the soldiers were killed "execution style" -- along with their four drivers. They had been forced to lie down and were shot in the head about 80 miles east of Baghdad.
The soldiers had just completed training and were heading toward Basra in southern Iraq, Alaiwa said.
Two of their transport cars were stolen and two others were set on fire in the attack, he said, adding that the soldiers had not been robbed of anything.
Alaiwa called the incident a terrorist attack. He has asked the Ministry of Defense for reinforcements in Mendili, part of Diyala province.
Discovery of the bodies was followed by news that insurgents had killed a U.S. State Department security official at a U.S. Army base near Baghdad airport. (Full story)
Unification and Jihad has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks and kidnappings since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Al-Zarqawi said in an audiotape posted on a Web site he was behind the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on August 19, 2003, that killed 22 civilians, including the U.N.'s chief envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello
The group has said it killed numerous Westerners in Iraq, including the recent slayings of two Americans and a Briton kidnapped in September.
This weekend's killings followed a continued pattern of insurgent attacks on the Iraqi army. Iraq's interim government is training forces to stabilize the region ahead of national elections set for January.
Three attacks Saturday
On Saturday, two suicide car bombings and a drive-by shooting killed at least 14 people in separate incidents.
The deadliest attack took place in western Iraq near Haditha, Camp Al-Asad, which is on the Euphrates River about 124 miles west-northwest of Baghdad.
U.S. Marine spokesman Lt. Lyle Gilbert said the suicide attacker killed 10 Iraqi police and wounded at least five others, and there were no U.S. casualties.
But an Iraqi journalist on the scene said at least 30 people were wounded in the blast.
The car bomb targeted a police station, where dozens of Iraqis were lined up to surrender their weapons and/or join the police force, several witnesses told the journalist.
Several hours later, a suicide car bomb detonated at a highway checkpoint near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad.
Two Iraqi national guard members were killed and another was wounded, a U.S. military spokesman said.
In the third attack, in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, insurgents in a vehicle fired on a five-truck convoy, killing two Turkish drivers and wounding two other Turks, local officials said.
An Iraqi national guard official said that attackers in a BMW fired at the convoy, which was arriving from Baghdad around 12:30 p.m. The trucks had delivered food to U.S. military bases in Baghdad, the national guard official said.
Earlier the U.S. military said that a newly promoted associate of al-Zarqawi had been arrested in Iraq on Saturday.
The al-Zarqawi associate was seized early Saturday along with five other terrorists in southern Falluja, the insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, the military said.
Their identities were not disclosed.
Initially, the al-Zarqawi associate was thought to be a minor member of the terrorist's circle, however "due to a surge in the number of al-Zarqawi associates who have been captured or killed by [multinational forces] strikes and other operations, the member had moved up to take a critical position as an al-Zarqawi senior leader," the U.S. military said.
Falluja has been the site of intensified U.S. attacks in recent weeks, with American forces stepping up their efforts against al-Zarqawi and his group.
The U.S. State Department is offering $25 million for the capture or death of al-Zarqawi, whose group last week swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden.
Iraqi interim government officials Saturday told reporters at a news conference that the government was trying to maintain ongoing discussions with leaders of Falluja.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have threatened to launch a new offensive on Falluja if its tribal and religious leaders fail to hand over al-Zarqawi and other militants.
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