Al-Qaeda militants gunned down a senior Iraqi official Tuesday and soldiers discovered 15 beheaded bodies as the furore over the US shooting of an Italian intelligence agent threatened to carve a deep rift between Washington and Rome. The US military's conduct in Iraq was under scrutiny over the shooting of the Italian and a Bulgarian soldier in a separate incident, and a video of soldiers abusing at least one wounded prisoner. On the political front, a senior Shiite official said the country's new government lineup would be unveiled after the first freely elected parliament in half a century convenes on March 16.The deputy director of the Iraqi interior ministry's naturalisation department, Ghazi Mohammed Issa, was killed in broad daylight outside his Baghdad home by masked gunmen in a car, ministry official Sabah Kadhim said. The assassination was claimed in a statement posted on the Internet by Al-Qaeda's group in Iraq, headed by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It was impossible to verify its accuracy.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi army said it found 15 beheaded corpses, both men and women, on an old military base near Latifiyah, south of Baghdad. The corpses were found during an army raid on the old Hatin army base, now believed to be used by insurgents, said Captain Mohammed Abdul Hussein al-Saedi. The soldiers launched the operation after reports some Shiite pilgrims on their way to the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf had disappeared near Latifiyah, around 40 kilometres (30 miles) from Baghdad, where rebels frequently launch attacks.