Five US marines have been killed in a bomb attack in western Iraq, the military said yesterday.

"Five marines were killed in action Thursday when their vehicle hit an explosive device while conducting combat operations near Haqlaniyah," said a statement.

The latest deaths bring to 1,681 the number of US military personnel who have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.

Another report says, the head of an anti-corruption unit in northern oil city of Kirkuk and his deputy were shot dead in a drive-by attack while 17 slaughtered bodies were found in Qaim, a police source said yesterday.

"Colonel Rahim Othman Said, chief of the Kirkuk anti-corruption brigade and his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Ghanem Jayad Jabbar, were shot late Wednesday by gunmen in a BMW" sports car, Colonel Adel Zein el-Abidin said.

"Jabbar died instantly, while Colonel Said was dead on arrival at the hospital in Kirkuk," a disputed city in northern Iraq that been the site of many attacks against Iraqi security forces and civilians.

It was the first time that the anti-corruption unit had been targeted, however.

Kirkuk police chief Turhan Yussef said attackers had tried to kill him Thursday as he was driving in an unmarked car.

At least 17 bodies in civilian clothes were found scattered near a town close to the Syrian border that is considered an insurgent hotbed, with 11 shot in the head and another beheaded, witnesses said yesterday.

The 11 who were shot in the head had their hands tied behind their backs, according to the witnesses, which included a reporter for The Associated Press. They were found near a small hamlet called Jabab, about 19 miles east of Qaim. It was unclear when they were killed.

The Interior Ministry also confirmed that another six bodies were found near Qaim outside the village of Fosfat. Interior ministry Maj. Falah al-Mahamdawi said the six men were found Thursday. They all had civilian ID cards.

It was unclear if the bodies had any connection to a group of about 20 Iraqi soldiers that have been missing from the Qaim area since late Tuesday.

Qaim, about 200 miles 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, with a total of 11 Marines being killed in the campaigns.

al-Qaeda in Iraq, the terror group led by Jordanian-born Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed in an Internet posting that it had abducted a total of 36 Iraqi soldiers in western Iraq on Wednesday. The posting, on a Web site known to carry militant statements, could not be verified independently.

"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 government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari a day to set free "Muslim women" held in Iraqi prisons. It did not elaborate.Capt. Ahmed Hamid said the soldiers disappeared Tuesday after leaving an Iraqi army base in two minibuses from Akashat, a village near the Syrian border about 115km southwest of Qaim.

Hamid, contacted by telephone at an Iraqi military base in Qaim, said the soldiers were wearing civilian clothes and travelling to Baghdad for a vacation.

Elsewhere, a US soldier died Thursday of non-combat injuries near Tuz Khormato, about 130 miles north of Baghdad, the military said.

Five other US soldiers were wounded Thursday when a suicide car bomber attacked their convoy between Beiji and Tikrit, 130km north of Baghdad, but none of the injuries was life-threatening, the military said.