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BAGHDAD
(AP) - Militants beheaded three hostages said to be
Iraqi Kurd militiamen, showing their deaths in a
video posted on a website Sunday and denouncing
Kurdish political parties for co-operating with
Americans in Iraq.
In a separate incident, a group claimed to have
kidnapped 25 members of the Iraqi National Guard. A
report on the Arabic TV station Al-Jazeera said the
soldiers were threatened with death unless a
detained Shiite leader was freed within 48 hours.
The bodies of the three Kurdish hostages were found
by a road outside the northern city of Mosul, said
Sarkawt Hassan, security chief in the mainly Kurdish
town of Sulaimaniyah. He identified them as members
of the peshmerga militia of the Kurdistan Democratic
party.
"They beheaded them," Hassan said.
Iraq's prime minister vowed his government was
working for the release of all hostages, including
two Americans and a Briton who are also threatened
with decapitation by their captors, who claim to be
from an al-Qaida-linked group.
News of another kidnapping emerged Sunday as the
Lebanese Foreign Ministry said three Lebanese
working for a travel agent and their Iraqi driver
were snatched on the highway between Baghdad and the
insurgency stronghold of Fallujah. The captives were
identified as Fadi Munir Yassin, Cherbal Karam Haj
and Aram Nalbandian, all Lebanese, and Iraqi Ahmed
Mirza.
The slaying of the three Kurds was claimed by the
Ansar al-Sunna Army, a group that has targeted Iraqi
Kurds and that previously killed 12 kidnapped
Nepalese workers.
A statement from the group, posted with Sunday's
video, said the three were abducted as they were
transporting military vehicles to a base in Taji, 25
kilometres north of Baghdad.
The video shows three young men, two of whom hold up
identity cards. Seconds later, each has his throat
slit. A man is seen cutting off each hostage's head.
The heads are then seen placed on the backs of the
victims.
The "apostate military men, affiliated with the
traitor Kurdistan Democratic party" were beheaded
after being interrogated, the statement said.
Their bodies were left on the road "for them to be
an example to others, and for us to avenge our
women, children and elderly who die daily from
American raids."
The statement said the Ansar al-Sunna Army has
targeted Iraqi Kurdish parties because they have
"sworn allegiance to the crusaders and fought and
are still fighting Islam and its people."
The statement also accused the leaders of Iraq's two
main Kurdish parties, Massoud Barzani and Jalal
Talabani of being servants of Israel.
The 25 National Guard troops were taken by a group
calling itself Brigades of Mohammed bin Abdullah,
according to the Al-Jazeera report.
A brief video clip aired by the station showed men
in military dress sitting on the floor, with men
standing behind them pointing guns to their heads.
Most of the hostages had their heads bowed, but they
were not blindfolded and appeared uninjured.
No audio was aired, but Al-Jazeera's announcer said
the rebels threatened to kill the 25 unless Hazem
al-A'araji, a member of rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr's office in Baghdad, was released within 48
hours.
U.S. forces and soldiers from Iraq's national guard
raided the Baghdad houses of al-A'araji and another
senior al-Sadr aide, Raed al-Khadumi, on Saturday.
Al-A'araji and his brother were detained.
The three Kurd's abductors have been accused in a
number of attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces and on
Kurds - including Feb. 1 bombings against Kurdish
political offices in the northern city of Irbil that
killed 109 people.
On Aug. 31, it released a video showing the slaying
of the 12 Nepalese, one of them beheaded and the
others shot with an assault rifle.
About 135 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq,
and many have been killed.
Americans Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong and
Briton Kenneth Bigley were snatched last week from
their Baghdad home.
The al-Qaida-linked Tawhid and Jihad group, led by
Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed
responsibility for their abduction in a video
released Saturday and threatened to behead them in
48 hours unless Iraqi women are released from
U.S.-run jails in Iraq.
Another militant group, calling itself the Salafist
Brigades of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, also claimed in a
video aired Saturday to be holding 10 hostages
working for an American-Turkish company. The
hostages' nationalities and the name of their
employer were not known.
The Canadian Press, 2004
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