22 Shia pilgrims found dead in Iraq

BAGHDAD -- Gunmen forced their way onto a bus of traveling Shia pilgrims yesterday and shot all 22 men aboard as they traveled through western Iraq's remote desert on a trip to a holy shrine, security officials said.

The bodies were discovered late last night, hours after the gang of gunmen stopped the bus at a fake security checkpoint and told all the women and children to get off, according to a security official who interviewed a survivor.

The gunmen then drove the bus a few miles off the main highway between Baghdad and the Jordanian border in Sunni-dominated Anbar province. The pilgrims were ordered off the bus and shot one by one, the security officials said.

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Hadi Rizayig, the provincial police chief, said the highway is protected by the Iraqi army.

Shia pilgrims have been a favorite target for Sunni insurgents who are trying to revive the sectarian violence that brought Iraqi to the brink of civil war just a few years ago.

Yesterday's attack comes fewer than four months before U.S. troops, who surged into Iraq in 2007 to stem the religious killings, are scheduled to leave the country.

An Iraqi army patrol found the deserted women, weeping and wailing, by the side of the highway. Soldiers found the bus a short distance away and loaded the women and children back on, and headed back to Karbala.

The pilgrims had been on a trip to the Sayyida Zainab shrine in Damascus. -- AP