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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Al-Tawhid threatens to kill Bulgarian hostages |
| 2004-07-09 |
| Militants in Iraq threatened on Thursday to kill two Bulgarian hostages within 24 hours unless US-led forces freed prisoners, stepping up pressure on Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s new interim government. The Arabic satellite television station Al Jazeera said the tape was from the Tawhid and Jihad group headed by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been accused by Washington of links to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. The tape showed two men, identified as Bulgarians, sitting in front of masked captors, two of them wielding automatic weapons while a third read a statement. "The group said the Bulgarian government bore responsibility over the safety of its citizens because it has sent troops to Iraq," said Al Jazeera. No immediate comment was available from Bulgarian officials, and it was not clear whether the captive Bulgarians were military personnel or civilians. In the latest violence in Iraq, guerrillas killed five US soldiers and two Iraqi guards in a mortar attack on National Guard headquarters in Samarra, north of Baghdad. A US Army Apache attack helicopter fired Hellfire missiles at a nearby building after the strike, killing four insurgents, the US military said. The deaths in Samarra, a mainly Sunni Muslim town about 100km north of Baghdad, brought to more than 650 the US combat death toll in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March last year to topple Saddam Hussein. The guerrilla attack occurred a day after the interim government announced a new security law giving itself tougher powers to combat guerrilla attacks. Outside Samarra, insurgents opened fire on a convoy of oil tanker trucks, killing two drivers, at least one of whom was Turkish, witnesses said. In Baghdad, police said an official of Saddam’s ousted Baath party was killed when a bomb hidden in his car exploded outside a rope factory he owned in the south of the city. Baathists have frequently been murdered in revenge attacks. In the northern city of Mosul, one police officer was killed and seven wounded when a roadside bomb exploded at a roundabout. Another was shot dead when insurgents fired at a police station, the US military said. Four suspected insurgents were detained. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |