21 bodies found in Iraq, bomb kills 5 U.S. soldiers

6/10/2005

More than 21 bodies were found in a western Iraqi town on Friday. Meanwhile, the U.S. army said that 5 U.S. soldiers died in a roadside bomb in the Anbar province.

Witnesses said that the bodies were found near the western Iraqi town of Qaim, close to the Syrian border.

The bodies were blindfolded with their hands tied behind their back.

The victims were discovered in two different sites near Qaim. Twelve of the bodies were scattered in a gravel pit and five were found beside a desert road often used by the Iraqi army. Two of the men were beheaded.

Another nine bodies were discovered near Qaim outside the village of Fosfat.

Iraqi police said on Wednesday that 22 Iraqi soldiers were abducted after leaving their base in Qaim.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the seventeen bodies, who were in civilian clothes, had any relation to the kidnapped soldiers.

A group in Iraq claimed in an Internet statement on Thursday that it kidnapped 36 Iraqi soldiers, not 22 as reported by police, and demanded the government to release all female detainees within 24 hours in exchange for the soldiers.

Nearly three months ago, 30 bullet-riddled bodies of members of the security forces were found on the banks of the Euphrates near Qaim.

Qaim has been the scene of several U.S. and Iraqi military operations. The U.S. army carried out two major operations in the town last month. A total of American soldiers were killed in the campaigns.

Also in western Iraq, a raodside bomb killed five American soldiers in the Anbar province, the U.S. military said in a statement.

The Marines, from the 2nd Marine Division, were killed while conducting combat operations in the town of Haqlaniya, 90 miles north of Baghdad, the statement added.

In other violence, gunmen killed two senior police officers in Kirkuk late Thursday, police spokesman Colonel Yadgar Abdullah said.

Abdullah said Colonel Rahim Othman and his assistant Ghanim Chiad were gunned down in the city centre by unknown gunmen.

Elsewhere, gunmen killed Basra Police Academy Commander Brigadier Karim al-Daraji in Al-Watan Street in Basra on Friday.

In Saqlawiya near Fallujah, residents reported mortar shells falling on a U.S. base followed by plumes of smoke. There were no reports of casualties.

Also Friday, U.S. soldiers killed a truck driver in Ishaqi, 110 kilometers to the north of Baghdad, claiming that he didn’t acknowledge their presence on the road.

The Tikrit-based Joint U.S. Coordination Centre said in a statement that the truck driver, who was carrying vegetables from Samarra to the southern city of Amara, was taken to a U.S. medical unit but later died there.

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