GUNMEN wearing Iraqi military uniforms slaughtered 16 Kurdish villagers
yesterday, officials said, blaming al-Qaeda for the massacre.
Brigadier General Nadhim Sharif, commander of Iraqi border forces in Diyala
Province, told AFP the gang stormed the village of Qara Lus, near the Iranian
border, 100km northeast of Baghdad, at dawn.
A US military spokesman said the military was investigating reports of the
attack that had been received from the Iraq army.
"They report AIF (insurgents) dressed in Iraqi army uniforms killed 15 civilians
and wounded one other," he said.
The mayor of the nearby town of Mandali, Abdul-Hussein Murad, confirmed Sharif's
report that 15 men had been killed and added that a woman was also among the
victims, bringing the death toll to 16.
Sharif said the gunmen arrived at 6am and went house to house, masquerading as
security forces on a legitimate mission.
"They then searched the houses and ordered the people to leave. They separated
men from the women and children and then they shot at the men, killing 13
immediately and two others a little later," he said.
The commander blamed the attack on the so-called "Islamic State of Iraq", an
alliance of Sunni militant groups that serves as a front for al-Qaeda in Iraq
and has a strong presence in the war-torn province of Diyala.
Meanwhile eight more American troops were killed in Iraq, seven of them on a
single day, the US military said yesterday, amid raging violence and a desperate
search for three captured soldiers.
Three US soldiers were killed last Friday when their vehicle was hit by a bomb
northeast of Baghdad, and two more in an ambush inside the city.
Another soldier died in combat in western Iraq, one was shot dead while on foot
patrol in Baghdad and the eighth was killed yesterday by a roadside bomb south
of the capital that wounded two US and two Iraqi troops. The deaths brought the
total US casualties since the March 2003 invasion to 3,412 and the total deaths
in May to 69, making it one of the bloodiest months.
