Rebels ambushed and killed 49 unarmed Iraqi soldiers and, in a separate attack on Sunday, killed a US diplomat in a mortar strike near Baghdad airport. 

The bodies of 37 Iraqi soldiers shot dead northeast of Baghdad were found on Saturday and 12 more corpses discovered yesterday, police and officials said.

"They were all executed, we found them executed," said Interior Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul-Rahman.

The attack was another blow to the efforts of the interim government to develop Iraq's fledgling security forces to tackle a raging insurgency that US-led forces have failed to quell.

The soldiers, based at Kirkush, 90 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, had been in civilian clothes, heading for home leave in three minibuses when they were ambushed.

Police said insurgents appeared to have forced them to lie on the road before shooting them. The minibuses were burned.

A senior security official, who asked not to be named, said most of the soldiers had been from the mainly Shi'ite Muslim cities of Basra, Amara and Nassiriya in southern Iraq.

"It appears that they were ambushed by a large, well-organized force with good intelligence," the source said.

The headless body of an unidentified man in a business suit was found yesterday with feet tied, floating in the Tigris River near the northern city of Kirkuk, police said.

The body was the fourth to be recovered from the area in the past two months. The other three appeared to have been Iraqis working with US forces, police said.

Iraqi security forces have taken a more visible role in counter-insurgency operations in recent months and the US-backed government sees them as a key weapon in its drive to win back control of all rebel areas before elections in January.

A US embassy spokesman said a diplomatic security officer had been killed by "indirect fire" about 5 AM yesterday at Camp Victory, a sprawling US military headquarters near the airport that comes under frequent rebel attack.

"I mourn the loss of one of our own today in Baghdad. Assistant Regional Security Officer Ed Seitz ... was a brave American, dedicated to his country," US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a statement.

Seitz was the first US diplomat known to have been killed in Iraq since last year's US-led invasion.

US warplanes pounded targets in Falluja, the toughest guerrilla stronghold yesterday, killing five people, witnesses said. Hospital officials said the dead were civilians.

The US military said a "precision" strike had destroyed a known enemy command and control post in northern Falluja.

US forces have stepped up air strikes and other attacks in the city west of Baghdad in a campaign they say is aimed at insurgents and foreign fighters led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has a US$25 million US bounty on his head.

(China Daily October 25, 2004)