Gunmen ambushed a group of travelers at a fake checkpoint they set in western Iraq on Wednesday, and killed at least 14 of them in what appeared to be the latest blow of violence in the country.
Gunmen ambushed a group of travelers at a fake checkpoint they set in western Iraq on Wednesday, and killed at least 14 of them in what appeared to be the latest blow of violence in the country, Iraqi officials said.
The gunmen struck near the town of Nukhaib west of the holy city of Karbala in the Anbar province, Associated Press reported.
The assailants manning the fake highway checkpoint checked the identities of travelers, presumably to identify their sects based on their names, according to officials.
Police said they found blood-stained IDs on the ground identifying some of the dead as coming from Karbala, 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Baghdad.
Officials said the 16 victims of Wednesday's attack were shot in the head. They said the dead included police and soldiers, as well as civilian residents of Karbala.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Wednesday's attack, but Iraqi officials believe insurgents including al-Qaida's Iraq branch as well as loyalists of Saddam Hussein's former regime are responsible for much of the violence against civilians and government security forces.
Mohammad al-Moussawi, a provincial councilman in Karbala, confirmed that four of the dead ambushed were civilians from the province.
The area around Nukhaib, near where Wednesday's killings happened, was the site of a similar September 2011 ambush on a bus carrying pilgrims.
Violence has spiked in Iraq in recent weeks, raising fears of a return to widespread sectarian bloodshed.
According to the United Nations, at least 1,045 Iraqi civilians and security personnel were killed in May. The tally surpassed April's 712 killed, making May the deadliest month recorded since June 2008.
Iraq witnessed its bloodiest bout of violence between 2006 and 2007, when the country was on the brink of civil war and armed men freely roamed the streets of Baghdad.
