Militants behead Kurdish hostages; seize 15 Iraqis

BAGHDAD – A militant group beheaded three Iraqi Kurdish hostages, showing the killings in a videotape posted on a Web site Sunday, 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.”

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 within 48 hours 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 Sunday 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 American contractors, Jack Hensley and Eugene “Jack” Armstrong, and a British engineer, Kenneth Bigley, who were kidnapped Thursday in Baghdad; two French journalists, George Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, who were kidnapped Aug. 20 en route to Najaf; and two Italian aid workers, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, kidnapped Sept. 7 in the capital.

On Saturday, an organization linked to a Jordanian-born militant, Abu Musab Zarqawi, threatened to kill the American and British hostages 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.

The Iraqi minister of foreign affairs, Hoshyar Zebari, also in London, told BBC television: “Really our policy is not to negotiate with the terrorists.”

A suicide car bomb exploded Sunday near a joint patrol of U.S. and Iraqi forces near the city of Samarra, according to Lt. Wayne Adkins, a spokesman from the 1st Infantry Division. The blast killed an Iraqi soldier and an Iraqi civilian and wounded seven people, including four U.S. soldiers.

The attack was the first of any significance in the city since U.S. forces moved in on Sept. 9 to reinstate the local government, which had been driven out by insurgents. Adkins said the driver of a four-door sedan detonated a bomb as the U.S.-Iraqi patrol approached the vehicle.

Adkins said the attack would not prevent U.S. troops from continuing to patrol the area. He said the only other incident in Samarra since U.S. forces entered it occurred Sept. 15, when insurgents fired an errant rocket-propelled grenade at coalition forces during a City Council meeting.

“We’ve been very happy with the progress in Samarra,” Adkins said.