IRAQ - Jun 10 - Insurgents Kill 21 Soldiers, Five Marines.

At least 21 bodies are found close to Baghdad border with Syria while five US Marines are killed in a roadside bomb explosion. Eyewitnesses said that one group with 12 bodies had their hands tied behind their backs and were wearing civilian clothes. They were found near a small hamlet called Jabab, about 30km east of Qaim. It was unclear when they were killed. There were another nine bodies found near Qaim outside the village of Fosfat. They were also in civilian clothes and had civilian identification cards. It was unclear if the bodies had any relation to a group of about 20 Iraqi soldiers that have been missing from the Qaim area since late Jun 10. Qaim, an insurgent hotbed 322 km west of Baghdad, has been the scene of numerous US military and Iraqi army operations. US Marines carried out two major operations in the area last month. A total of 11 Marines were killed in the campaigns. Al Qaeda in Iraq, the terror group led by Jordanian-born Abu Mussab Al Zarqawi, claimed in an Internet posting that it had abducted a total of 36 Iraqi soldiers in western Iraq. The posting carried on a website known to carry militant statement could not be independently verified. "A group of the infidel guards was arrested and investigated Wednesday", It said. The group added that the men confessed their crimes "against Sunnis and their loyalty to crusaders". To release them, it gave the Shiite-led government of PM Ibrahim Jaafari a day to set free "Muslim women" held in Iraqi prisons. It did not elaborate. Capt. Ahmad Hamid said the soldiers went missing Jun 7 after leaving an Iraqi Army base in two minibuses from Akashat, a remote village near the Syrian border about 110 km southwest of Qaim. Hamid, contacted by telephone at an Iraqi military base in Qaim, said the soldiers were wearing civilian clothes and traveling to Baghdad for a vacation. The US military said the five Marines were killed while conducting combat operations near the volatile Anbar province town of Haqlaniyah, 145 km northwest of Baghdad. The Marines were assigned to the Regimental Combat Team 2, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force. Their identities are being withheld pending next-of-kin notification. As of Jun 6, at least 1,689 US military members have died since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an AP count. Late at night, a car bomb killed four men and injured another nine as they sat outside a takeaway restaurant in north-western Baghdad. The men were waiting outside the eatery located in a working class district to pick up falafel sandwiches. On the political front, leaders of the country's Sunni minority rejected a compromise offer on giving them more say in the drafting of a constitution. It was not clear how the Shiite-dominated National Assembly and government would react to the rejection by the main Sunni political group of an offer of more seats on the parliamentary committee charged with drafting a constitution by Aug 15. Further wrangling could jeopardize that deadline. A spokesman for the Gathering of the Sunni People said they would hold out for 25 seats against the 15 on offer. He said they would boycott negotiations if arbitration by a three-person panel consisting of a Sunni, a parliamentary representative and a UN official failed to settle the matter. "We will not agree and will not concede any seat", spokesman Adnan Al-Dulaimi said. "If they refuse our demand we will resort to arbitration. If they insist then we will suspend our participation". Calls for a boycott and insurgent violence in Sunni areas meant few of the formerly dominant 20-percent minority took part in the Jan 30 election. Only 17 Sunnis sit in Parliament and only two are now on the 55-seat constitutional committee.