BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi officials said today that 41 bodies - some bullet-riddled, others beheaded - have been found at two separate sites and they believe some of the corpses are Iraqi soldiers kidnapped and executed by insurgents.

In other violence, a suicide bomber detonated a garbage truck packed with explosives outside the Agriculture Ministry and a hotel used by Western contractors on Wednesday, killing at least three people, officials said. The bomber also died.

Elsewhere, guerrillas struck a police patrol with a roadside bomb in the southern city of Basra, killing one policeman and wounding three more, Lt. Col. Karim Al-Zaydi said.

Twenty of the corpses were found late Tuesday in a field near Rumana, a village about 12 miles east of the western city of Qaim, near the Syrian border, police Capt. Muzahim al-Karbouli said.

Each of the bodies had been riddled with bullets - apparently several days earlier. They were found wearing civilian clothes and one of the dead was a woman, al-Karbouli said.

South of Baghdad in Latifiya, Iraqi troops on Tuesday made another gruesome discovery, finding 15 headless bodies in a building inside an abandoned former army base, Defense Ministry Capt. Sabah Yassin said. The bodies included 10 men, three women and two children.

On Tuesday,

the U.S. military announced it was speeding up an inquiry into the shooting death of an Italian agent killed Friday by U.S. troops at a Baghdad checkpoint - a friendly fire incident that has strained relations with Italy.

Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini told parliament Tuesday that U.S. troops killed

Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari

by accident, but disputed Washington's version of events.

Fini said the car carrying Calipari and Sgrena was not speeding and U.S. troops did not order it to stop, contrary to what U.S. officials say. But Fini dismissed allegations made by Sgrena that the shooting was an ambush.

"It was an accident," Fini said. "This does not prevent, in fact it makes it a duty for the government to demand that light be shed on the murky issues, that responsibilities be pinpointed, and, where found, that the culprits be punished."