BAGHDAD, Oct 25: Iraqi officials said on Monday the perpetrators of the weekend slaughter of 49 newly-trained army recruits on a remote road in eastern Iraq could have been tipped off from within the ranks.

An official inquiry has been opened into one of the bloodiest attacks against Iraq's fledgling security forces which have been a prime target of guerillas, amid charges that soldiers and police were being left defenceless.

Investigators are to try to determine whether the army's ranks have been infiltrated by the insurgents, said Akil Adeli, deputy governor of Diyala province where Sunday's massacre took place.

"We will explore whether elements of the police or the national guard had any contact with terrorists," he said.

The unarmed soldiers were found shot dead, with the bodies left strewn along the road. They were ambushed while returning home from a final training course at a base near Iraq's eastern border with Iran.

The victims' colleagues at Iraqi national guard bases in Mandali et Kirkush said they felt defenceless in the windswept desert plain, cut off from all forms of communication.

"There must have been infiltrations. If not, how did the attackers know the exact time the convoy was due to leave and which road it was going to take?" asked a guardsman.

The minibuses in which the fresh recruits travelled "could easily have taken another road, as there are three routes south from the Kirkush base", said another soldier, who like the first declined to give his name.

"Such an attack needed a network of information at the higest level," he said.

Several soldiers said that some of the blame must fall on the base commander, and deplored the lack of security measures to protect the convoy given that the road was dangerous.

Political figures, both for and against the US-backed government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, also lamented the lack of protection for the new troops.

These future soldiers "were sent on the road without any weapons," said Naim al-Kaabi, an official for the office of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a fierce opponent of Allawi.

"The government must re-examine all areas of security in this matter," he said. "Patrols must comb the area around the two bases of Kirkush and Mandali night and day to flush out all of the terrorists."

Nassir al-Shadershi, a member of Iraq's interim parliament, accused the authorities of failing in "their obligation to protect our own security forces".

Across Iraq's political spectrum, the consensus was that the goal of the massacre claimed by the group of Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi was to create chaos and incite tension between the Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities.

Abu Ammar al-Dakhil, an official from the Shiite political party Al-Dawa, said many posts in the new Iraqi police and army were being filled by Shiites from the impoverished south who were desperate for a job.

The victims of the minibus massacre had been returning home to the southern Shiite-dominated cities of Amara and Kut after their 20-day training course.

"These young men, marginalised for the past 35 years, and without work have signed up en masse to the security forces," said Dakhil, noting that such work did not require a university qualification.

The US-led military has invested time and money into training Iraq's army, police and national guard, with the ultimate goal of handing over control and withdrawing from the country.

The Iraqi military was disbanded following last year's invasion, but it is slowly being rebuilt, with 10 new battalions already in place along with 65 national guard battalions.

Iraq's government aims to establish a regular army of 27 battalions.-AFP