Bodies of executed Iraqi workers found
Insurgents have executed 18 Iraqi workers who were seeking jobs at a US base north of Baghdad, police said today.
Their corpses were discovered yesterday on a field near the city of Mosul and were taken to the Kadhimiya hospital in Baghdad, police said.
They said that the insurgents shot the Iraqis, ages between 14 and 20, on December 8 after they stopped their two mini-buses some 30 miles west of Mosul as they were travelling from Baghdad.
Their hands were tied behind their back and each of them was shot in the head, said police. All of them were Shiite Muslims from Baghdad’s northern neighbourhood of Kadhimiya who were hired by an Iraqi contractor to work at a US base in Mosul.
Mosul, a predominantly Sunni city 225 miles north of Baghdad, was relatively peaceful in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime last year.
But it has become a hotspot of violent insurgency ever since US-Iraqi forces invaded the main guerrilla stronghold of Fallujah in November. Most of the Fallujah militants are believed to have fled either to Mosul or to Baghdad.
A suicide attack on December 21 in a mess tent at a US base in Mosul left 22 people dead, including 14 American soldiers.
