Iraqi journalist Atwar Bahjat, who worked for al-Arabiya television, was killed near Samarra on Thursday. She was on her way to report on the bombing of a Shia shrine in Samarra. (AFP)

Baghdad, Feb. 23 (Reuters): Gunmen at a makeshift checkpoint outside Baghdad dragged more than 40 people from their cars and shot them dead today, dumping their bodies in a roadside ditch, police and other local officials said.

The victims were returning from a demonstration against the bombing yesterday of a Shia shrine in Samarra, police and interior ministry officials said.

They were found near the village of Nahrawan, just south of Baghdad, said Dhary Thoaban, the deputy chairman of the local council in the nearby province of Diyala. Police put the number of dead at 47 and said the victims included both Sunnis and Shias.

The police and interior ministry sources said the gunmen apparently set up the false checkpoint just outside the town of Kenaan in order to catch the protesters as they were returning home.

It was not clear, however, whether all the victims had been rounded up and shot dead in one group, or whether they had been pulled from their cars separately and shot.

Reuters Television footage showed the bodies, mostly of young men, laid side by side on the ground outside the main hospital building in Baquba, the capital of Diyala province. It was not clear from the pictures how the victims had died.