Iraq Office Denies Headless Bodies Reports

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050312/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_denial&cid=540&ncid=1480


But Iraqi Defense Ministry and army officials who were the original sources for the reports insisted — when contacted again on Saturday — that the decapitated bodies had, in fact, been found.


The Government Communications Directorate's Media Relations office said in an English-language announcement that "official sources in the ministries of Defense, Interior and Health deny the news that some of mass media reported regarding finding 15 bodies beheaded in Latifiya."


An official in the Media Relations office refused to expand on the statement when contacted by The Associated Press.


Defense Ministry Capt. Sabah Yassin and Capt. Fatiq Ayed, of the Iraqi Army's 50th regiment that is responsible for the region where the bodies were found, said that a patrol of the regiment found the corpses March 8.


The patrol made the gruesome discovery inside an abandoned base of the former Iraqi army in Latifiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, Yassin, Ayed and other sources said.