35 Corpses Found in Iraq

Security Forces Find 35 Corpses in Iraq (NYT)

Iraqi officials said Wednesday that 35 bodies — some bullet-riddled, others beheaded — have been found at two separate sites and they believe some of the corpses are Iraqi soldiers kidnapped and executed by insurgents. In other violence, a suicide bomber detonated a garbage truck packed with explosives outside the Agriculture Ministry and a hotel used by Western contractors on Wednesday, killing at least three people, officials said. The bomber also died.

[…]

Twenty of the corpses were found late Tuesday in a field near Rumana, a village about 10 miles east of the western city of Qaim, near the Syrian border, police Capt. Muzahim al-Karbouli said. Each of the bodies had been riddled with bullets — apparently several days earlier. They were found wearing civilian clothes and one of the dead was a woman, al-Karbouli said.

South of Baghdad in Latifiya, Iraqi troops on Tuesday made another gruesome discovery, finding 15 headless bodies in a building inside an abandoned former army base, Defense Ministry Capt. Sabah Yassin said. The bodies included 10 men, three women and two children. Their identities, like the others found in western Iraq, were not known.

Bizarre.

Update (1614): The body count has been upped to 41.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.