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14 ‘executed’ bodies found in Mosul

* Senior Zarqawi aide killed by Iraqi police: Allawi
* Says new Iraq mass grave may contain 500 bodies
* New suicide bombing at Baghdad checkpoint injures 12

MOSUL: The bodies of six young men, all shot in the head as if executed, were discovered in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday, bringing the total of such corpses found to 14 in two days.

A Reuters correspondent said they wore civilian clothes and their identities were not clear. A hospital official said eight similar bodies had been found in a cemetery in the west of the city on Monday.

In other violence, at least four Iraqi police officers and as many as 10 were killed in an ambush near the town of Salman Park as they travelled in a convoy from Basra to Baghdad. In Baghdad, a suicide car bomber struck an entrance to the Green Zone government compound on Tuesday, 24 hours after an almost identical attack at the same checkpoint. Hospital staff said 12 civilians were wounded, five of them seriously. Some of the wounded spoke of others blown to pieces.

In Fallujah, two US Marines were killed, taking the death toll to 10 in three days among the force dealing with an upsurge in fighting there. Two US Marines were also killed in or near Baghdad on Monday.

A senior aide to Zarqawi was killed by Iraqi security forces, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said. In a televised address to Iraq’s National Council, Allawi said police had killed Hassan Ibrahim Farhan and seized two of his aides, but did not say when or where.

In his speech, Allawi also said the war crimes trials of some of Saddam Hussein’s top deputies would begin next week, but he did not say whether Saddam himself would take the stand.

Allawi told the interim national assembly in Baghdad that a cousin of Saddam had been captured in Fallujah last week where he was fighting with rebels. Ezzeddine al-Majid “is now in the hands of Iraqi security forces. There will be an inquiry and he will be judged,” he said.

Also on Tuesday, an Iraqi official revealed that Saddam is being held at the US military base of Camp Cropper, near Baghdad, confirming his long-suspected location for the first time in public. reuters/afp

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