IRAQ: The militant group led by the Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last night signalled a fresh escalation of the Iraq insurgency crisis by claiming responsibility for the massacre of about 50 members of the national guard found dead yesterday on a remote road in eastern Iraq, writes Michael Howard in Baghdad.
The group, Tawhid and Jihad, said on an Internet site it had carried out what appeared to be execution-style killings. The group was responsible for the beheading of Ken Bigley and other western hostages as well as a spate of suicide bombings.
The massacre was the latest in a series of increasingly lethal attacks against Iraq's security forces, regarded as collaborators by insurgents. Until now, they have mainly used suicide bombs, mortars and roadside devices in their strikes.
Iraqi officials said the men, who had just finished three weeks of training at the Kir Kush military base near the Iranian border, were ambushed on Saturday evening at a bogus checkpoint between Balad Ruz and Qazaniya in Diyala province, 50 miles north-east of Baghdad.
A senior defence ministry official, Brig Salih Sarhan, said the soldiers, who were unarmed and wearing civilian clothing, "were ordered from their buses by men in police uniforms, told to lie face down on the ground, and then shot in the back of the head".
There were conflicting reports of the number of dead but police said they had recovered 51 bodies from the scene.
"It is a savage act. They were all executed," said Col Adnan Abdul-Rahman, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Baghdad.
Gen Walid al-Azzawi, commander of Diyala provincial police, said the bodies had been laid out in four rows.
Some reports said the attackers had first fired rocket propelled grenades at the three minibuses in which the soldiers were travelling back to their homes in the Shia areas of southern Iraq.
Brig Sarhan said three civilian drivers had been killed. Two of the minibuses had been burned and one stolen by the attackers.
The executions followed a suicide bomb attack on Iraqi security forces north and west of Baghdad on Friday, in which at least 22 Iraqi policemen and national guardsmen were killed.
In three separate incidents on Saturday, insurgents hit Iraq army and national guard forces on patrol in and around the central city of Samarra, lightly wounding two Iraqi soldiers, according to the US military.
Brig Sarhan said the attack appeared to have been well planned and indicated the growing confidence of insurgents in the restive Sunni Triangle. He said it remained unclear why the soldiers were not accompanied by an armed escort, and how the attackers appeared to have gained such precise information about the soldiers' movements.
The deputy governor of Diyala province, Aqil Al Adili, said last night: "There must have been an informant. How come they knew they were unarmed and they knew about the time and the way these men were travelling?"
Yesterday the continuing violence in Iraq accounted for a US diplomat, who was killed in his sleep by "indirect fire" at Baghdad airport. A US embassy official in Iraq said Mr Edward Seitz was an agent with the state department's bureau of diplomatic security.