12 cops executed in Iraq

Insurgents overran a police post near Saddam Hussein’s home town on Tuesday, hauled 12 men outside and shot them in a dramatic show of force, a day after Osama bin Laden declared holy war on the US-backed election.

The dawn massacre in Tikrit, where the guerrillas also blew up the police station, was the bloodiest in a spate of attacks in Iraq’s Sunni minority heartlands North of Baghdad; at least five other policemen were killed and several National Guards. In Samarra, US forces banned cars from the streets after an attack on a police station and two attacks on US troops, residents and the US military said. A suicide bomber failed to assassinate a National Guard general in Baghdad.

Hours after the purpoted bin Laden tape was broadcast by Al Jazeera, gunmen swarmed over the Mukashifa police compound, just south of Tikrit, after dawn, police and a US military spokesman said. Rounding up the dozen officers in the compound, they shot them execution-style, gunning down one who tried to flee, a police source said. —Reuters