Web video shows three Kurds beheaded; 15 Iraqis abducted

By Steve Fainaru
The Washington Post

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BAGHDAD, Iraq — A militant group beheaded three Iraqi Kurdish hostages, showing the killings in a videotape posted on a Web site yesterday, while another group announced that it had kidnapped at least 15 Iraqi National Guardsmen.

A statement accompanying the video of the beheadings was signed by the Army of Ansar al-Sunna, a group that said it had killed 12 Nepalese hostages in August. The statement said the Kurdish hostages were beheaded as "an example to others, and for us to revenge our women, children and elderly who die daily from American raids."

The decapitated bodies of the three slain Kurdish hostages had been found Wednesday on a road near the northern city of Mosul, said Sarkawt Hassan, security chief in the Kurdish town of Sulaimaniyah. He said the three were members of the peshmerga militia of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and were taken hostage as they moved vehicles to a base in northern Iraq.

Al Jazeera satellite television network aired a brief videotape showing gunmen surrounding what it said was a group of Iraqi National Guardsmen. A previously unknown organization calling itself the Brigades of Mohammed bin Abdullah threatened to kill the men unless Iraqi authorities released an aide to rebellious Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

U.S. and Iraqi security forces arrested the aide, Hazim Araji, during a raid yesterday morning, according to local television reports. Araji is al-Sadr's spokesman in the Kadhimiya district of Baghdad.

The kidnappings have added yet another macabre dimension to the escalating violence across Iraq. Among hostages still held are two U.S. contractors, Jack Hensley and Eugene "Jack" Armstrong, who were kidnapped Thursday in Baghdad along with a British engineer.

On Saturday, an organization linked to a Jordanian-born militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, threatened to kill the three within 48 hours unless all Muslim women held at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad and at another prison in the southern city of Umm Qasr were released. Both the Iraqi government and the U.S. military said there are no women held at those two sites.

The Iraqi minister of foreign affairs, Hoshyar Zebari, who was in London with interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, told BBC television: "Really, our policy is not to negotiate with the terrorists."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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