The official said that the assailants drove up to the checkpoint near al-Qaim, a border town, on Friday and opened fire.
He said that the attackers shot an eighth soldier several times but left him alive “to convey a message to the Iraqi army”.
“Two minibuses loaded with gunmen ambushed an army humvee in the main street in Akashat and killed seven troops and wounded one,” a military spokesman for the western province of Anbar said.
Witnesses said the assailants mutilated the corpses of the dead.
The desert in the far west of Iraq along the Syrian border has seen frequent attacks by fighters against US or government targets.
The new attack on the border targeting troops is likely to inflame security tensions in Baghdad about suspected collusion by Damascus in the passage of men and weapons over the border from Syria into Iraq.
After twin waves of deadly bombings claimed by al-Qaeda in Iraq hit Baghdad last August, Iraqi officials charged that Syria was complicit in the attacks and the two governments withdrew their ambassadors.
Twin car bombing
The attack in al-Qaim came on a day in which at least 24 people were killed, including an Iraqi interpreter working for the US military and several people targeted in a pair of car bombings.
In one incident, at least eight people were killed and more than 69 injured after a car bomb exploded in Tuz Khurmatu, a town 170km north of Baghdad.
Women and children were among the casualties of the bombing, police Colonel Hussein al-Bayati said.
The attack severely damaged several surrounding houses as well as the home of Niazar Nomaroglu, a Turkmen provincial councillor, al-Bayati said.
Reports suggest the target of the attack was Nomaroglu himself, who has been targeted before on at least two separate occasions.
According to reports, he was not in the area at the time of the attack.
Tuz Khurmatu is located in the province of Kirkuk, where Iraq’s majority Arabs and minority Kurds are locked in a struggle over land, wealth and power.
The other car bombing targeted the house of Mustafa Mohammed, a police captain, in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, police said.
Two neighbours were killed and 27 other people wounded, including some of Mohammed’s relatives.
BAGHDAD: Al-Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate claimed responsibility on Thursday for an attack by gunmen and suicide bombers on Iraq’s central bank, in which at least 15 people died.
The attack on Sunday triggered a 90-minute gun-battle in the heart of the Iraqi capital, a day before parliament sat for the first time since a March election that produced no clear winner.
National Security Minister, Sherwan al-Waeli, told Reuters the attack was not a robbery, adding that it involved 15 gunmen, including seven suicide bombers.
In a statement published on jihadist websites on Thursday, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) said it was behind the “unique” attack, which was carried out by five men.
“The Bank was targeted because it is the artery that feeds the Satanic alliance with life via oil money and the stolen wealth of Muslims,” said the statement.
A number of attacks since the election, which has yet to produce a government, have been blamed on an effort by Islamist insurgents linked to al-Qaeda to prove it remains a potent force despite the loss of senior commanders.
Overall violence in Iraq has dropped since the sectarian carnage in 2006/07, but bombings and shootings are still common.
Insurgents continue to pose a threat as the United States moves ahead with a plan to end combat operations in August and cut troop numbers from around 85,000 to 50,000 by Sept. 1, before a complete withdrawal by the end of 2011.
Also on Thursday, an anti-al-Qaeda fighter and four family members were killed as they slept in their garden to escape the heat in a former insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, officials said. It was the second attack against Sunni figures who have turned against the terror network in as many days.
Gunmen broke into the house of Khudr al-Issawi and opened fire on him and his family during the pre-dawn attack in a village near Fallujah, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad. The farmer, his wife, two daughters and a son were killed, according to local police chief Brig. Gen. Mahmoud al-Issawi. Another son was wounded.
The police chief, who blamed al-Qaeda in Iraq, said the slain man was a member of one of the local government-backed Sunni militias known as Awakening Councils in the village of Fhelat. The groups helped changed the course of the war when they revolted against al-Qaeda and joined the Americans in late 2006 and 2007.
Source: Agencies