'Dozens of corpses' found in Iraq

Security forces found 35 corpses - some shot to death, others beheaded - in western Iraq and south of the capital, police said today.

Security forces found 35 corpses - some shot to death, others beheaded - in western Iraq and south of the capital, police said today.

Twenty of the corpses were found late yesterday in a field near Rumana, a village about 12 miles east of the western city of Qaim, near the Syrian border, said police Captain Muzahim al-Karbouli.

Each body had been riddled with bullets - apparently several days earlier. They were found wearing civilian clothes, said Capt. al-Karbouli. The dead included one woman.

Iraqi troops made another grusesome discovery yesterday south of Baghdad in Latifiya, finding 15 headless bodies in a building inside an abandoned former army base, said Defence Ministry Captain Sabah Yassin. The bodies included 10 men, three women and two children.

Capt. Yassin said some of the dead men in Latifiya were thought to have been part of a group of Iraqi soldiers kidnapped by insurgents in the area two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad, a suicide bomber today detonated a rubbish truck packed with explosives outside the Agriculture Ministry and a hotel used by Western contractors, reportedly killing himself and at least three others. Dozens of people were injured.

In the southern city of Basra, one policeman was killed and three injured when a roadside bomb struck a patrol.