The two main roads leading to southern Iraq have become veritable death traps, plagued by insurgents who have turned to a new tactic -- carjacking -- to terrorise the public and earn fast cash. Sixteen Iraqis were killed in a massive ambush by insurgents Sunday on a motorway linking Baghdad to south-eastern Iraq. In a two-phased attack, gunmen shot dead two finance ministry employees and their driver before slaughtering 13 Iraqi national guardsmen near the city of Kut.
The roadside bloodshed has become typical south of Baghdad, as a chilling recent episode witnessed by an AFP reporter showed.
At the intersection of Salman Pak, 10 kilometers (six miles) south of the capital, a Toyota with four armed men tried to overtake a tanker truck.
The driver was able to escape and sped off down the highway. But his pursuers caught up with him, flashing their guns. The driver slammed on the brakes, leapt out of the vehicle and fled in the opposite direction but ran back when the gunmen opened fire.
They grabbed him and threw him in their car while one of the bandits seized the truck. The group sped off but none of the bystanders moved a muscle, relieved to have escaped the brush with violence with their lives. The second road, leading to the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala, crosses a region known as the "triangle of death" due to frequent murders of both Iraqis and foreigners.
On Saturday, despite American checkpoints, 13 Iraqi corpses including that of a woman were found shot near a highway close to Latifiyah, a rebel stronghold south of Baghdad. Their bullet wounds indicated they had been shot at close range.
In Salman Pak in the heart of the region, the law of the jungle reigns. On the sides of the road, burnt-out wrecks of cars lay stranded. "They set their sites on the government cars like the Japanese all-terrain vehicles or the tankers. Then they steal them or burn them," said one driver who asked not to be named.
"In a few days, five trucks carrying cars and a shipment of generators have disappeared," he said.
This transport route for merchandise between the southern port of Basra and Baghdad is a gold mine for the bandits. The drivers, for their part, take their lives into their hands every time they set out.
One driver on the route who gave his name as Bassem had his Opel stolen in the town of Aziziyah. He and his friends were yanked from their car, jeered at, frisked and left by the side of the road.
Bassem went to the police station in Salman Pak only to find it had been destroyed by insurgents. He went to the one in nearby town of Jisr Dyala to file a report but the helpless police officers there threw up their arms.
Since then, Bassem returned to Salman Pak to reclaim his property. He found it, but a group of armed men were sitting inside.
"He asked them to give it back because I am poor but they just looked down on me and one of them said 'We sacrifice our lives for jihad and you are not even capable of sacrificing your car.'"
In this area dominated by Sunni Muslims, where signs splashed with slogans such as "No to Elections Under Occupation," referring to the January 30 national poll, and "Yes, Yes, Yes to Saddam" are frequent sights, chaos reigns.
One local whispered how the insurgents killed the son of a general who quit the national guard.
"He was praying for forgiveness in a mosque but the insurgents knew he had returned to Baghdad to claim his pay. They burned his legs, killed him and sent the videotape to his father," he said.
Hajia Fadha also had a horrible end. His father, employed with the Emirati unit of an American company, refused to quit his job although he was being threatened.
They killed him and ordered his mother not to plan a funeral.
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