Insurgents ambushed an Iraqi army patrol north of Baghdad yesterday, killing 19 soldiers in a well-planned attack, a day after the Pentagon announced 10 US Marines were killed by a bomb west of the capital.
The Iraqi soldiers were travelling in a five-vehicle patrol near Baquba, when they were hit by a roadside bomb. Immediately afterwards, gunmen opened fire in what police described as a well-planned assault.
The attack in Baquba, where there has been a surge in insurgentactivity over the past three weeks, followed the assault on the Marines near the former rebel city of Falluja on Thursday, the deadliest attack on US troops for four months.
An Iraqi militant group posted a video yesterday which showed what it said was an explosion near Fallujah that killed the Marines. The group, the Islamic Army in Iraq, is among several insurgent organisations battling US troops and Iraqi forces.
Separately, four Western aid workers kidnapped a week ago appeared in a second militant video aired by Al Jazeera TV. The four - two Canadians, a Briton and an American - face death unless all 12,000 prisoners in Iraq are released by December 8 th, according to the video.