IRAQ - Mar 9 - 20 Bodies Found In Valley Near Syria.

A shepherd discovers 20 corpses, including those of civilians and women in a remote valley near the Syrian border, a day after 15 headless bodies are discovered south of Baghdad. Some had been shot in the head, but it was not immediately clear whether any of the bodies had been decapitated, or whether any belonged to the police or members of the Iraqi Army, who have often been targets of large-scale killings by insurgents. The grisly discovery was made as insurgents launched a series of attacks Mar 9 that left at least 10 people dead, including two suicide car bombings in central Iraq and an attack on a police patrol in the southern city of Basra, where violence has been rare in recent weeks. The violence began at 6:30 a.m., when a suicide bomber drove a garbage truck full of explosives into a parking lot next to the Sadeer Hotel in central Baghdad. Gunmen exchanged fire with the hotel's armed guards for several minutes before the truck detonated about 35 meters, or 115 feet, from the hotel, which is next to the Agriculture Ministry building. The explosion destroyed dozens of cars in the parking lot, leaving a huge crater in the concrete and sending a massive plume of black smoke in the area around Firdous Square, where the statue of Saddam was pulled down by US soldiers two years ago. All the hotel's windows were knocked out, but the hotel did not appear to have been damaged structurally, witnesses said. One person was killed and at least 22 were wounded in the blast, which took place so early that few people were in the streets, Interior Ministry officials said. Within hours, Islamist Web sites posted several statements from the network of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, Iraq's most-wanted militant, claiming credit for the attack. The statements said they had chosen the hotel as a target because it had a "Jewish staff" and Israeli intelligence agents were staying there. At about 3:30 p.m., an American soldier was killed in Baghdad when his patrol struck a roadside bomb, US military officials said. Elsewhere in the capital, gunmen fired at a minibus carrying employees of a Kuwaiti company, killing one of the passengers and wounding three. Later in the day, the interim planning minister, Mahdi Al Hafidh, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt when gunmen fired on his car in western Baghdad, Interior Ministry officials said. Two of the minister's guards were killed and a third was seriously wounded in the attack, the officials said. On Mar 9 morning in Habbaniya, 80km west of the capital, a suicide bomber drove an Oldsmobile sedan into an army base, killing 2 officers and a civilian, and wounding at least 15 people, army officials said. The attacker is believed to have been a Sudanese citizen, the officials said. Attacks have been rare in southern Iraq in recent weeks. But several attacks took place around the January elections in Zubair, about 30km west of Basra. Unlike most of southern Iraq, which is dominated by Shiite Muslims, Zubair is known as a haven for extremist Sunnis. The circumstances surrounding the bodies found in Qaim remained mysterious. One of the bodies was identified as that of Riyadh Aziz Al Sanad, a civilian who lives near Qaim and had been shot in the head, the hospital official said. All of the bodies were returned to their families for burial, he added. The 15 bodies found Mar 10 included women and children, and were in an old military base between Karbala and Latifiya. Late last year, more than 100 bodies were found in the northern city of Mosul, many of them wearing Iraqi Army and police uniforms, and many had been beheaded.