Baghdad, Iraq - Gunman hijacked a bus of Shiite religious pilgrims traveling through a Sunni area in western Iraq late Monday night, killing 22, officials said.
A government spokesman said the bus had just entered a desolate valley west of Ramadi when gunmen set up a fake checkpoint, then hijacked the tour bus of pilgrims from Karbala on their way to a holy shrine in Damascus. As the Iraqi military launched a helicopter search, the tour group was taken out into the desert and 22 men aboard were shot to death, a military spokesman said.
Security forces found eight women and six children alive at the scene and took them to a nearby hospital for medical treatment, according to Gen. Abdul Aziz al-Ubaidi, the commander of the Iraqi military in Anbar province.
Religious leaders on Tuesday blamed the attacks on Sunni insurgents hoping to revive sectarian violence as U.S. troops prepare to leave the country at the end of the year.
Anbar province, where the attacks occurred, was once one of the most dangerous places in Iraq. Violence has lessened in recent months, but it remains a focal point of activity for Sunni insurgent groups, including al-Qaeda in Iraq. On Aug. 25, 15 people, most of them police, were killed in violence there.
Mohammad Fathi Hantush, the spokesman of Anbar provincial government , said the tour bus had chosen a risky route and was traveling at night through a stretch of byway that was “dangerous during the daytime, let alone at night.”
Special correspondent s Uthman al-Mokhtar in Fallujah and Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this story.