White House is pretty upset with Allawi’s remarks with elections only one week away. But i guess Allawi is finally realizing that he has to criticize USA once in a while to gain some popularity amoing iraqi masses.
Allawi slams coalition ‘neglect’
An Iraqi soldier covers the bodies of the army recruits
The gunmen had inside information, officials suggest
Iraqi’s interim prime minister has suggested US-led forces were negligent over the massacre of 49 army recruits on a remote road on Saturday.
“There was great negligence on the part of some coalition forces,” Iyad Allawi told Iraq’s interim national assembly.
An official later told BBC News that Mr Allawi’s comments to the national assembly had been misinterpreted.
Gunmen killed the unarmed recruits along with three drivers after stopping their buses near the Iranian border.
The BBC’s Claire Marshall in Baghdad says it is understood that the interim prime minister feels that the ambushed convoy of unarmed troops should have been given an armed escort by the US military.
Inquiry launched
Mr Allawi condemned the massacre as a “heinous crime” against the National Guard and said a special inquiry was under way.
“The killings represent the epitome of what could be done to hurt Iraq and the Iraqi
people,” he told the assembly.
However, national security advisor Kasim Daoud later said that responsibility could
only be apportioned after the investigation.
“We cannot say who is to blame unless we have to do a full investigation,” he told the BBC.
Ambush claim
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Islamist militant group Tawhid and Jihad, has claimed responsibility for the ambush which came as the recruits were on their way home from a training camp.
Gunmen posing as police officers stopped the buses at a bogus checkpoint, killing many of the recruits with a bullet to the head.
The deputy governor of Diyala province has raised the possibility that there was collusion between the killers and members of the security forces.
“Otherwise, the gunmen would not have got the information about the soldiers’ departure from their training camp and that they were unarmed,” Aqil Hamid al-Adili told al-Arabiya television.