Rebels Mount Grisly Ambush, Executing 49 Iraqi Soldiers
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - In the single deadliest ambush of the insurgency, guerrillas dressed as police officers executed 49 freshly trained Iraqi soldiers on Saturday evening on a remote road in eastern Iraq as the unarmed soldiers were going home on leave, Iraqi officials said today.
The soldiers were pulled out of three minibuses at a fake checkpoint about 95 miles east of Baghdad, near the Iranian border, police officials said. They were told or forced to lie down on the ground in four rows, then killed mostly with bullets to their heads. The ambush, extraordinarily ambitious in scope and violence, showed a high level of organization, and the insurgents likely had inside information on the travel plans of the soldiers, who were members of the nascent Iraqi National Guard, officials said.
In the capital, a State Department security officer, Edward Seitz, was killed by a mortar or rocket attack early this morning at Camp Victory, the American base next to Baghdad International Airport that serves as the military's operations center. Mr. Seitz is the first American diplomatic employee known to be killed in the war. He was posted at the base at the time of the attack, said Bob Callahan, an American Embassy spokesman.
Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has led two uprisings against the occupation, issued a statement late Saturday night saying he fully supported the leaders of the insurgent stronghold of Falluja, which could face invasion within weeks by the Marines. Mr. Sadr said he was ready to intervene in the standoff, and that he backed the leaders whether they decided to reach a peace agreement with the Americans and the Iraqi government or take up arms. "No mercy to the occupiers, and the resistance will continue, God willing," Mr. Sadr said.
Mr. Sadr's incendiary words come at a time when his aides say he has been trying to disarm his thousands-strong militia, the Mahdi Army, and enter legitimate politics in advance of general elections scheduled for January. Last April, Mr. Sadr told his militia to wage war on the Americans at the same time that the Marines staged an ill-fated assault on Falluja, creating a two-front revolt that led to one of the biggest crises of the occupation.
Mr. Sadr's statement raises the possibility that a similar eruption could take place if the Marines invade again, though a Sadr aide, Hashim Abu Rejaf, said in an interview that Mr. Sadr was just lending "moral support" for now. Mr. Sadr favors a peaceful solution, he said, especially as elections approach. Still, Mr. Sadr's message could be interpreted as a call to arms by some members of the Mahdi Army, which is loosely organized and made up mostly of poor, undisciplined young men.
This morning, a delegation of leaders of Falluja drove to Baghdad to meet with Defense Ministry officials to resume negotiations.
The ambush of the Iraqi National Guardsmen deals a humiliating blow to the American military and the interim Iraqi government at a time when top officials say Iraqi security forces are being quickly readied to take over policing duties from the 138,000 American troops.
The attack raises disturbing questions about the training process and the recruits: Why were the guardsmen allowed to travel unarmed and without protection, given the frequent attacks on the Iraqi security forces? Why did men trained to be soldiers not put up a fight, especially when there were so many of them? How did the insurgents get police uniforms and information on the travel plans of the soldiers?
Iraqi and American officials said they had no immediate answers.
"We're working with the ministry of defense to get a full assessment of what happened," said Capt. Steven Alvarez, a spokesman for the office of Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, who is overseeing the recruitment and training of the Iraqi security forces.
American military officials have been admitting lately that insurgents have infiltrated the ranks of the new security forces and are undoubtedly passing on information. American troops have found piles of Iraqi police and guardsmen uniforms in various raids over the last several months. Reporters, including this one, often meet police officers and guardsmen across Iraq who curse the Americans and say they are willing to fight the occupation.
American troops who work with the Iraqi security forces generally say they are inept or outright hostile.
Outside of ramming car bombs into crowds, insurgents have never killed so many people in one attack, or done so execution style. Even then, the bombs generally wipe out young men standing outside police or national guard stations looking for jobs, and not trained soldiers. On Saturday morning, two car bombs in the volatile Sunni triangle area killed a total of 18 Iraqi police officers, guardsmen and recruits.
The attack on the three busloads of soldiers took place hours later, after sunset, as the men were heading to see friends and family in primarily Shiite cities in the south, said Lt. Col. Najah Mahdi, a police officer in the town of Balad Ruz, near the site of the ambush. The soldiers had left a large American-run training base in Kirkush in the late afternoon and were driving through barren desert, near the rugged hills of the Iranian border. The road is said by many Iraqis to be plagued with bandits.
Just outside the town of Badrah, the men ran into the fake checkpoint.
The insurgents "stopped the three vans, forced the soldiers to lie down and started shooting them in the head," Colonel Mahdi said. "Some of them tried to run away, but resistance fighters killed them, too. That's why when you look at the scene, you find bodies along the road. "It was really a disaster," the colonel added. "They burned the vans. It was a terrible scene. The area is so isolated and quiet. It's infamous for thieves who steal cars and money. The road is so empty and it's easy for anyone to commit such a crime."
Images on Al Arabiya, the Arab satellite network, showed dozens of men lying on the ground, their clothes stained with large splotches of blood. Some wore shirts and jeans, others traditional robes. At one point, the bodies were piled into the back of a truck that drove away down a dusty road.
Zaineb Obeid contributed reporting from Balad Ruz for this article, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Najaf.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times
( '? notes:
not a journalist to get the news in Iraq, but an Iraqi employed by the Times....
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