Shells point to police in guardsmen slayings

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Two weeks before the massacre of almost 50 Iraqi national guard recruits on Saturday, 17 national guardsmen were shot execution-style at their base near the Syrian border, apparently with the aid of Iraqi police, U.S. officials said.

The national guard compound in Karabilah near the town of Husaybah and the U.S. Marine base at al-Qaim then were leveled by explosives.

Eleven Iraqi national guard soldiers died in the Oct. 12 attack and six others survived their gunshot wounds, U.S. officials said.

These officials said the soldiers were forced to kneel facing a wall and then were killed with a combination of AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.

Because of incidents involving Iraqi security forces, the U.S. military has been spray-painting the shell casings of the ammunition given to each of the divisions.

The spent shells found at the site compound where the Iraqi soldiers were executed were red, the color earmarked for the Iraqi police force, one military official said.

Iraqis perceived to be helping the U.S.-led coalition have been increasingly under attack; more than 800 have been killed in Iraq in the past year and many more wounded, according to U.S. estimates.

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi blamed the coalition for Saturday's ambush and execution of soldiers returning home from initial training. They were traveling in four vans, and apparently were forced to stop along the road by a checkpoint and then were fatally shot.

"There was great negligence on the part of some coalition forces," Mr. Allawi told the Iraqi National Council in Baghdad yesterday.

The Iraqi soldiers killed Saturday were unarmed, press reports said.