MANDALI, Iraq, Oct 24 (AFP) - Forty-three unarmed new Iraqi soldiers and their five drivers were found dead beside a remote road Sunday after being mercilessly executed by attackers while returning home from their final training course.
The corpses of the new army recruits and the drivers were found with a single bullet wound to their heads, in one of the deadliest attacks against the country`s fledgling security forces.
The cadets were ambushed on Saturday afternoon when they were travelling on five minibuses from a training base outside the town of Mandali in eastern Iraq to their homes further south, Mandali`s Iraqi national guard commander Ali al-Kaaki told AFP.
"We have found 48 bodies, including five civilians who were drivers," said Kaaki.
"This was an execution. We found the dead lying face down by the roadside with a single bullet wound to the head," Kaaki said, adding that the recruits were wearing civilian clothing and were unarmed at the time of the attack.
Two of the minibuses were torched by the assailants and they made away with the remaining vehicles, according to Kaaki. He added the victims had all their money and personal affairs on them but were missing their shoes.
The lifeless bodies of the cadets were laid out in rows on the ground of a national guard base in Mandali and some of them were badly burnt. The cadets had just graduated on Saturday after completing their training.
Anger mixed with grief on the faces of the national guardsmen at the base. "This is a massacre, this is terrorism!" screamed one of them, who did not wish to be identified.
A man in a grey disdash (traditional male robe) sobbed and hit his head in anguish as two of his companions carried out the body of his brother from the row of victims and put it in a wooden coffin.
Earlier the police chief for Diyala province said the corpses were discovered on the road between Baladruz and Badra, south of Baquba, a town lying 60 kilometres (40 miles) northeast of the Iraqi capital in an area that is a hotbed of anti-US and anti-government sentiment.
"We received information about this during the night and immediately dispatched a patrol, which found the bodies of the new recruits who had been executed," said Walid Khaled Abdulsalam. It was unclear who carried out the ambush.
The victims had been returning home to the southern Shiite-dominated cities of Amara and Kut after a 20-day training course at a desert camp near the Iranian border, said local council member Khadija Mohammed.
"The bodies were evacuated to a national guard base at Mandali (120 kilometres east of Baquba)," she added.
The US-led military in Iraq has invested much time and money into training Iraq`s army, police and national guard.
The recruits were from the Kirkush training base on a windswept desert plain near Mandalai on the country`s eastern border with Iran. A US military spokesman said the defence ministry was likely to make a statement about the matter later in the day.
The slaughter followed twin suicide car bombings against police and the Iraqi national guard on Saturday that killed 20 people.
It also comes after a slew of constant car bombings and attacks on the country`s security forces aimed at crippling its ability to stand on its feet.
Members of Iraq`s security forces are a favourite target in an insurgency that flared up in the aftermath of last year`s US-led invasion and which US and Iraqi officials are desperate to crush.
Almost 70 police recruits were killed in one suicide car bomb attack in July in Baquba, the capital of Diyala province.
10/24/2004 13:55 GMT - AFP