Four Iraqi soldiers shown beheaded; American kidnapped

By Karl Vick
The Washington Post

MARCO DI LAURO / GETTY IMAGES Marines from the 1st Expeditionary Force, 1st Battalion 3rd Marines Bravo Company attend a memorial service yesterday at their Fallujah base to commemorate eight comrades killed Saturday.

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BAGHDAD, Iraq — A car bomb exploded at an airport checkpoint, a Lebanese American was reported kidnapped from his home, three headless bodies were found under a bridge and a U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb as violence continued in and around the Iraqi capital yesterday.

Gunmen killed a senior Oil Ministry official, Hussein Ali al-Fattal, after he left his house yesterday in western Baghdad, police said. Al-Fattal was general manager of a state-owned company that distributes petroleum byproducts.

Hungary, meanwhile, announced that it would withdraw its 300 troops from the country by the end of March, after Iraqi elections planned for January.

"It is an obligation to stay until the end of the election, while staying much longer is impossible," the Hungarian prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, said in Budapest, the capital. "From then on, the existence of a stable, secure and democratic Iraq must be ensured by other, mainly political means."

Hungary, a member of NATO since 1999, is among 29 countries participating in the U.S.-led military occupation, almost all of which maintain only small forces in Iraq. The Hungarians have carried out aid operations from their base in Hilla, a usually quiet city south of Baghdad.

Bulgaria, another coalition member, announced that it would trim its force of 483 soldiers by 10 percent next month after moving from Karbala, about 60 miles southwest of Baghdad, to Diwaniyah, also south of the capital.

The car bomb detonated at a checkpoint leading to Baghdad's heavily fortified international airport. When a guard approached an SUV and asked the driver to produce identification, the man at the wheel shouted, "Allahu Akbar!" — or "God is Great!" — and the vehicle exploded, said Mais Naib, 38, an Iraqi Airways employee waiting at the checkpoint.

"There were no Americans nearby," she said. "We are in real danger. I do not know what to do. Shall I sit home and stop coming to work? That is exactly what they want us to do — they do not want to see Iraq raise up again. I do not know what to do."

Reuters news agency, citing witnesses and hospital staff members, said an Iraqi security guard was killed and seven civilians were injured.
 
A member of the Army's 1st Infantry Division was killed and another soldier was injured when a roadside bomb exploded beside their combat patrol about 10 miles southeast of the capital.

As of yesterday, at least 1,123 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Marines of the 1st Battalion gathered yesterday to honor their fallen comrades in a former Iraqi military base now used by U.S. troops. Eight Marines were killed and nine injured in a car-bomb attack Saturday. It was the largest death toll for U.S. troops in a single incident in Iraq in more than six months. A suicide vehicle plowed into a 7-ton truck ferrying 18 Marines from Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment.

The kidnapped Lebanese American was identified by The Associated Press as Radim Sadeq, an employee of a cellphone company. He was abducted from his house in Baghdad's Mansour district, the same prosperous neighborhood where an unidentified U.S. citizen and four other people were kidnapped two days earlier, and where two Americans and a Briton were abducted last month. Those three were later beheaded.

Also yesterday, three beheadings were shown on a tape received by the Arab satellite news channel Al Jazeera. A group calling itself the Brigades of the Iraqi Honorables asserted responsibility for killing the three men, who were identified as members of the Iraqi National Guard. Three bodies believed to be theirs were found under the 14th of July Bridge, an emblem of the U.S. presence in Iraq because it is reserved for travelers cleared to cross the Tigris River into the fortified Green Zone, which is guarded by U.S. forces.

A fourth decapitation was posted on a Web site by the Ansar al-Sunna Army, which has boasted of several beheadings. The group identified the victim as Maj. Hussein Shanoun, an officer in the nascent Iraqi army being trained by U.S. forces.

Just before his death, the victim was shown warning Iraqi soldiers and police soldiers against "dealing with the infidel troops," meaning the Americans.

Insurgents have stepped up attacks on Iraq's U.S.-trained security forces, who the Americans hope will assume greater responsibility to enable Washington to begin drawing down its forces — now at their highest levels since the summer of 2003.

More than 85 percent of the estimated 165,700 multinational troops here are Americans, despite U.S. efforts to encourage other countries to assist in securing and rebuilding Iraq.

Four Jordanian truck drivers were reported kidnapped yesterday, a government spokeswoman said from Amman, the Jordanian capital, according to The Associated Press.

More than 170 foreigners have been kidnapped and more than 30 of them killed in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April last year.