More Kidnappings, Killing In Iraq

[David]

AP


Gunmen abducted a Lebanese-American contractor who worked with the U.S. Army from his Baghdad home, Iraqi officials said Wednesday, while four Jordanian truck drivers were seized by assailants in a separate kidnapping. A militant Muslim group claimed Wednesday to have beheaded an Iraqi Army officer that it captured in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Radim Sadeq, a Lebanese-American contractor with a mobile phone company, was snatched by gunmen when he answered the door of his home in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood overnight, Lt. Col. Maan Khalaf said.

It's the same area where two nights ago an American and other foreign workers were abducted following a gun battle. Many foreign companies are based in the neighborhood.

In Jordan, the government said Wednesday that four Jordanian drivers have been kidnapped in Iraq and two others were shot at by unknown assailants.

Jordanian spokeswoman Asma Khader declined to provide details on the abducted Jordanians but said her government has taken up the matter with the visiting Allawi.

She said the two other Jordanians came under fire in the Ramadi area in central Iraq ? a Muslim Sunni militant stronghold.

In other developments:


The group Ansar al-Sunnah posted a statement and showed a video on its Web site where they decapitated a man they identified as Maj. Hussein Shanoun. It was impossible to verify the claim.

The statement called him an "apostate" and said he took part ? by American orders ? in attacks against insurgents in the Mosul. The group claimed to have investigated him and that he "confessed."

A car bomb exploded on the dangerous stretch of road to the Baghdad International airport near a bus carrying airport employees to work, injuring nine people.

Gunmen killed an oil ministry official, Hussein Ali al-Fattal, in a drive-by shooting as he was on his way to work, the ministry said.

American forces are preparing for a major offensive against Fallujah and other Sunni militant strongholds north and west of Baghdad in hopes of curbing the insurgency so that elections can be held in January. Early Wednesday, U.S Marine warplanes hit an insurgent command post in Fallujah in a precision airstrike, the U.S. military said. Late Tuesday, a known weapons cache site in the southeastern part of the city was also destroyed, according to a statement.

There has been no word on an American and two other foreigners ? one Filipino and a Nepalese ? abducted Monday night in Baghdad. The Philippine government refused Wednesday to rule out negotiating with hostage-takers in Iraq, leaving open the possibility it would take its own steps to try to save a kidnapped Filipino worker.

On Tuesday, insurgents blew up an oil pipeline and an oil well in northern Iraq in a pair of attacks that shut down oil exports from the north, probably for the next 10 days, Iraqi oil officials said.

More than 160 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April last year. Some kidnapping groups seek ransom, while others pursue political motives such as the withdrawal of foreign companies and troops from Iraq. Kidnappers have killed about 30 hostages.

The kidnappers of aid worker Margaret Hassan are threatening to hand her over to al Qaeda-linked militants notorious for beheading hostages unless Britain agrees within 48 hours to pull its troops from Iraq, an Arabic television station reports.

The threat to Hassan, the Iraq director for CARE International, was made in a videotape received by Al-Jazeera television but not broadcast in its entirety because the station said it was "too graphic."

Instead, it transmitted a segment Tuesday night showing a hooded gunman but without sound. The newscaster said the kidnappers gave Britain 48 hours to meet their demands, "primarily the withdrawal" of British troops.

Otherwise, the 59-year-old Hassan will be handed over to al Qaeda in Iraq, a group headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His followers have beheaded at least six hostages: three Americans, a Briton, a Japanese and a South Korean.

In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair's office and the British Foreign Office both declined to comment on the reported demand. Britain has 8,500 troops in Iraq, the second-largest contingent after the United States.

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern told his parliament that the full tape showed the Dublin-born Hassan pleading for her life directly to the camera before suddenly fainting.

Ahern, who had not seen the video, said a bucket of water is then thrown over Hassan's head and she is filmed lying wet and helpless on the ground before getting up and crying.

Ahern described the text of the video as "distressing" and said "there were a number of very dangerous and very serious timescales stated."

Hassan, an Irish-British-Iraqi citizen who is married to an Iraqi, was kidnapped last month from her car in western Baghdad. No group has claimed responsibility for her kidnapping and there was no sign on the brief broadcast of any banner identifying who held her.