The South Korean government was checking reports that one or two of its nationals may have been kidnapped in Iraq, Foreign Ministry officials said on Sunday. The government was checking with its embassy in Iraq but it was unclear where the kidnappings may have occurred, they said. Ministry spokesman Lee Kyu-hyung said in a statement a militant Iraqi group had posted an Internet message saying it had kidnapped two South Koreans and demanding South Korea's withdrawal from the country within 72 hours. "We give the Korean government 72 hours to withdraw from Iraq, the land of Islam. If this is not done, the judgment of Allah will fall on the two hostages," said the message, signed by a hitherto unknown group calling itself Organization of Holy War in Iraq.
| All the good names were taken. |
"We shall issue pictures of the two hostages within the coming hours," said the statement dated Jan. 6. It was posted on a Web site used by some Islamists. The message from the group, whose name resembles a leading insurgent organization led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was not carried by the main pro-Islamist Web sites. There were no reports of missing South Koreans registered with the embassy in Baghdad, but the government was checking the presence of unregistered South Koreans in the country, Lee said. He declined to comment on the credibility of the kidnapping claim, but said all South Koreans in Iraq known to the government have been accounted for.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has argued the deployment was a tough but vital move to support the United States, a key ally with 34,000 troops in the South to deter aggression by communist North Korea. All the troops and civilian workers embedded with the contingent in Arbil have been accounted for, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted an unidentified official at the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as saying. Kim's killing followed the shooting death of two contract workers in 2003 near Baghdad. The government has since issued a ban on travel to Iraq by civilians, but some South Koreans have been entering the country. |