Insurgents turn detour area into killing field

ROBERT H. REID of Associated Press reports a little noted incident leading to many deaths following the crash of the U.S. Army AH-64 Apache near Mishahda, 25 miles north of Baghdad last Monday 16/1/06 which killed the two US Pilots.

American and Iraqi forces cordoned off part of a highway N of Baghdad after the crash and traffic was directed onto narrow dirt roads, insurgents turned the area into a killing field. By setting up makeshift checkpoints, they grabbed motorists and slaughtered about 40 over a two-day period.

A local tribal leader, Mohammed al-Khazraji, said he saw dozens of corpses strewn over the ground Wednesday, victims of the insurgents' culling.

Thirty people were dragged from their cars Wednesday and shot dead execution-style in farming areas in Nibaei, a town near Dujail, about 50 miles north of the capital, said police Lt. Qahtan al-Hashmawi.

"Most of the victims were Iraqi policemen, soldiers or commandos," he said.
Another 11 men were killed in similar fashion Tuesday and dumped about a mile from Nibaei, said another policemen, Capt. Ali al-Hashmawi.

In the boldest attack, gunmen opened fire on a convoy of the mobile telephone company Iraqna, killing six security guards and three drivers in the Nafaq al-Shurta district of western Baghdad.

In Basra, two American civilians were killed in a roadside bombing. They worked for the Irving, Texas-based security company DynCorp (whose nose was pushed out by MOD sponsored Aegis whose "trophy video" was being examined by the company ... with no results to date) and were training Iraqi police. A third American was seriously wounded in the attack, said the U.S. Embassy from their Baghdad Palace.

DynCorp spokesman Gregory Lagana identified the dead as Richard Thomas Hickman, 52, of Cave Spring, Ga., and Roland Carroll Barvels, 42, of Aberdeen, S.D.