The bodies of 57 men, women and children reportedly taken hostage in Iraq at the weekend have been found in a river, President Jalal Talabani said today.

The bodies were found in the river Tigris at Surwayrah, some 25 miles south of Baghdad.

"More than 50 bodies have been brought out from the Tigris and we have the full names of those who were killed and those criminals who committed these crimes," Mr Talabani said. He went on to say that a new Iraq government will be announced tomorrow.

Blaming the killings on "terrorists", he said that details would be released in coming days. "It is not true that there were no hostages. There were, but they were killed and they threw the bodies into the Tigris."

It was reported on Saturday that about 50 Shia people had been taken hostage by armed Sunni militants in Madain, south of Baghdad, and were threatened with death unless every Shia family moved out of the mainly Sunni town. The incident was likened to ethnic cleansing.

But doubts set in whether the incident had ever happened, after other residents in Maidan denied it. Iraqi security forces raided the town this week, but said they had found next to no evidence that anyone had been taken hostage or that there were ever any gunmen in the town.

Later, Shia officials said dozens of bodies had been found in the Tigris south of Madain, but residents and police in the area said they had not seen any.

Mr Talabani made his announcement at a news conference shortly after a meeting with Iraq’s new prime minister and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of Sciri, the leading Shia party that was one of the sources of information on the Madain hostages.

The grim death toll in Iraq increased today when insurgents executed 19 Iraqi soldiers in a football stadium at Haditha, 150 miles northwest of Baghdad, an interior ministry official said.

"These soldiers belonged to a group of 20 men who were travelling by bus to their base in Haditha when they were intercepted" by insurgents, the official said.

"They were taken to the stadium where they were executed. Only one soldier survived and he has been taken to the town’s hospital."

In the capital, three car bombs exploded in as many hours, following two similar deadly strikes yesterday, as insurgents stepped up attacks in Baghdad after a relative lull following the January 30 election.

Insurgents appear to be diversifying their strategy, mounting large-scale raids against police stations, such as one in the northern city of Mosul on Monday when a 50-strong group unsuccessfully tried to overrun local police. They have also been hunting down top officials in their homes.

Hoshyar Zebari, the Foreign Minister, later confirmed that a new government would soon be announced. "We’re just about there with the setting up of a government", he said, some 11 weeks after general elections that brought to power the Shia-based United Iraqi Alliance and his own Kurdish alliance.

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