BAGHDAD: Iraqi officials say 12 convicted al-Qaida members have been executed for their role in the 2006 massacre of 70 people at a wedding party in the central Iraqi town of Dujail.

Iraqi Deputy Justice Minister Busho Ibrahim said that the executions took place on Thursday.

An Iraqi court had sentenced 15 people to death in June over the killings in the predominantly Shiite town, in the latest in a series of trials of alleged perpetrators of atrocities during the height of Iraq's Sunni insurgency.

Ibrahim says that three of the convicted were spared from execution because they are still being tried in other cases.

Dujail is located 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Baghdad and is surrounded by Sunni areas.