IRAQ: A spate of ambushes and assassinations resulted in dozens of bodies being sent to a Baghdad hospital yesterday, while in northern Iraq a suicide bomber killed at least 19 people waiting outside a bank.
Batches of corpses were collected from sites west of the capital where several convoys had been reduced to smouldering wrecks in recent days, with some drivers and guards shot execution-style at close range and others beheaded.
The macabre scenes came amid reports that Iraqi and US officials are trying to coax some insurgents into mainstream politics by floating the possibility of an amnesty.
Most of the 24 bodies taken to the morgue at Yarmouk hospital were Iraqi, but some were believed to be foreigners.
Some were part of a convoy delivering supplies to a US military base near Ramadi and Falluja and others were thought to have worked for an Egyptian-owned mobile phone company, Iraqna.
Attackers armed with rocket-launchers and assault rifles ambushed another convoy last week in the same area, killing 17 people. Iraqi security officials said bandits rather than insurgents might be responsible.
But few doubted that an insurgent group sent the man wearing an explosives belt who blew himself up outside a bank in Kirkuk, killing 19 people, including pensioners queueing for cheques and child street traders selling sugar and kitchen utensils.
Some estimates said 22 people had died. Police said more than 80 had been injured.
Close to 1,000 people have been killed since a government was formed on April 28th.
Kurds, Turkomans and other ethnic groups vie for control of oil-rich Kirkuk.
Yesterday's atrocity may have been intended to overshadow the swearing in of a Kurdish former rebel leader, Massoud Barzani, as the first president of Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurds, who form the second-largest bloc in the government in Baghdad, want to make Kirkuk the capital of a semi-autonomous Kurdish region in a federal state.
"I promise to safeguard the accomplishments of Kurdistan and to carry out my duties faithfully," Mr Barzani said.
A suicide bomber in Baquba, north of Baghdad, rammed an Iraqi army checkpoint and killed five soldiers. A roadside bomb killed two US soldiers yesterday in Ramadi.
Iraqi government officials said their forces had captured a top bomb-maker working for al-Qaeda in Iraq. Jassim Hazan Hamadi al-Bazi, also known as Abu Ahmed, allegedly built and sold remote-controlled bombs from a repair shop 50 miles north of Baghdad. - (Guardian Service)