The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Samarra

Iraqi and US forces have found a mass grave containing 11 decomposed bodies of men believed kidnapped by Al-Qaeda militants last year, officials told AFP on Saturday.

The mass grave was found in Al-Jillam, 25 kilometres (15 miles) east of the central city of Samarra, said Sheikh Khaled Fleyih Hassan, leader of an anti-Qaeda group which discovered the corpses.

Hassan said that one of the victims was the son of the Samarra municipality chief and that two others were bodyguards of the city's mayor. All the 11 men were kidnapped during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in October 2007, he said.

Samarra police chief Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Khalaq Al-Samarraie and a local doctor, Abid al-Samarraie, confirmed the report.

Meanwhile, police said three policemen were wounded in a bomb attack targeting their patrol in the northern oil city of Kirkuk.

The body of an employee of the Kirkuk electricity company who had been kidnapped 16 days ago was also found on Saturday, an Iraqi security official said.

The victim had been shot dead.

In another attack south of Kirkuk, a Kurdish security official was killed when a bomb struck his car, police said.