Awful

An act like this requires military-style strength, planning and execution; which means the Iraqi insurgency is beginning to organize as a militia. Fantastic.

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

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

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 U.S.-led forces have failed to quell. The soldiers, based at Kirkush, 55 miles 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.

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