BASRA, Iraq: Eleven suspected foreign fighters from Egypt and Saudi Arabia were seized by gunmen from a prison in Iraq s largely Shiite second city of Basra Wednesday and all but one of them lynched, police said. A total of 20 gunmen forced their way into the city s Mina prison and disarmed the guards before making off with the detained suspects, the police said. The bodies of three of them were found in the city center close to the offices of the state-owned South Oil Company. The corpses of another seven were found in a southwestern neighborhood of Basra. The attack on the suspected Sunni militants came amid a wave of anger across Shiite central and southern Iraq over a bomb attack on one of Shiite Islam s holiest shrines. The bombing of the Imam Ali Al-Hadi mausoleum in the town of Samarra north of Baghdad sparked a spate of revenge attacks in the Iraqi capital in which six Sunni civilians were killed and 27 Sunni mosques assaulted. AFP
Detained Egypt, Saudi suspects lynched in Iraq second city
