Insurgents Massacre 49 Iraqi Recruits

Members of the Iraqi National Guard stand over the bodies of fellow guardsmen, found on a roadside north of Baghdad. The recent recruits apparently were killed by insurgents who ambushed the buses taking them from their training base to begin a three-day leave. (AP)

The Bureau of Diplomatic Security is the State Department's security unit. Its agents conduct a variety of tasks, including designing physical security for U.S. diplomatic buildings and personnel, and assessing threats, investigating attacks and devising responses.

Seitz, who was married, joined the State Department 16 years ago and had been posted to Washington, Chicago and China. He spent four years in Detroit as an investigator with the FBI's joint terrorism task force before heading to Iraq this past summer, according to Terry Booth, an FBI special agent in Detroit.

"He was considered part of our extended family," Booth said. "He was an outgoing and personable guy. Today is a very sad day around our office."

In 1999, Seitz was honored by the State Department for his response to the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. Before joining the State Department, Seitz was a police officer in Cleveland.

In other incidents, a Bulgarian soldier was killed when a car bomb exploded near his convoy in Karbala, about 60 miles southwest of Baghdad. A Turkish truck driver was found shot to death beside a highway near Baiji, north of Baghdad. The headless body of a man was fished out of a river in the northern city of Kirkuk.

A 17-year-old Iraqi girl and an 11-year-old boy were killed and four people wounded in clashes Saturday night between U.S. troops and insurgents on the outskirts of Samarra, 65 miles north of Baghdad, police said on Sunday. Witnesses said a U.S. military Humvee was also damaged, the Reuters news agency reported.

In Fallujah, a U.S. warplane bombed a fortification that insurgents were attempting to rebuild, the military reported.

[In Baghdad, a suspected car bomb exploded near the Australian Embassy Monday morning. The target appeared to be a security convoy; witnesses saw an armored vehicle blown off the road and ambluances tended to an unknown number of wounded and dead.]

Special correspondents Bassam Sebti and Omar Fekeiki in Baghdad and Saad Sarhan in Najaf, and staff writer Anne Hull in Washington contributed to this report.