Mosul: A pre-dawn assault Tuesday on an army camp guarding an oil pipeline in northern Iraq left 15 soldiers dead, security and morgue officials said.
The soldiers were killed near Hamam al-Alil, in the northern province of Nineveh, one of the most violent parts of the country, with provincial capital Mosul as well as surrounding areas suffering near-daily attacks.
The style of the attack, targeting a station housing security forces guarding an important piece of infrastructure, mirrored that of a similar shooting in the northern town of Tuz Khurmatu on Sunday in which six policemen were killed.
The latest bloodshed is part of a protracted surge in violence that has sparked concerns Iraq is slipping back into the all-out conflict that plagued it in 2006 and 2007, with government figures showing that more than 1,000 people were killed last month alone.
