|
|
 |
|
|
Last Updated: Oct 6th, 2004 - 09:02:04
|
|
BAGHDAD, Sept 22 AFP - At least 20 Iraqis were killed and more than 200 wounded in fresh violence through Baghdad today and fears grew for a British hostage whose two US colleagues were savagely beheaded by Islamist captors.
The US army launched a fresh offensive on Baghdad's radical
Shi'ite stronghold of Sadr City overnight that killed 13 people and wounded 149, said medics, downgrading an earlier toll.
A suicide car bomb targeting recruits for the Iraqi national guard ripped through a busy shopping area in central Baghdad, killing seven people, security and medical sources told AFP.
Another car bomb rocked the capital a few hours later but there were no immediate reports on casualties.In the northern city of Mosul, a US soldier was killed in an attack on a patrol while another American soldier died in a roadside bomb attack in Tikrit, the US military said.
Time was running out for a Briton, kidnapped by militants from an al-Qaeda-linked group headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose two US colleagues had their heads hacked off over the past two days. His chances of escaping the same fate appeared slim after the US embassy denied that the release of an Iraqi women held by the coalition was imminent.
The Iraqi justice ministry had said earlier that one of two
women biologists in coalition hands may be freed, offering a glimmer of hope to Kenneth Bigley's family. The al-Qaeda-linked group had demanded the coalition free all the women it detains.
Iraqi National Security Adviser Kassem Dawd said the justice ministry's declarations had been used out of context and said no release was imminent. He explained that the case of Rihab Taha -- known as Dr Germ and suspected of involvement in an illegal weapons program under Saddam was one of 20 that had been reviewed recently and for whom the Iraqis had recommended a release.
"It won't happen today, tomorrow or the day after ... All
security procedures relating to their release have to be completed first," Dawd said at a press conference in Baghdad. On Monday night, Tawhid wal Jihad issued a video showing in graphic detail the decapitation of US hostage Eugene Armstrong and extended by one day its ultimatum to Washington and London over the prisoners. His colleague Jack Hensley was beheaded last night after neither of two main powers behind the invasion of Iraq showed any sign of yielding to the captors' demands.
The US embassy said it received a body from Iraqi authorities but could not say whether it belonged to one of the two slain hostages. The US push during which 13 people were killed and 149 wounded in the Shi'ite bastion of Sadr City was described by an official from firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's office as the "most devastating" offensive there since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
US military officials claimed they had killed up to 25 fighters from Sadr's Mehdi Army and that the raid was aimed at stabilising the area and allowing reconstruction work to begin in full. The car bomb targeting recruits for the Iraqi national guard "... rammed into a group of people gathered to sign up for the Iraqi national guard" at a shopping complex on the central Al-Rabih street, a police officer said. "The suicide bomber drove onto the sidewalk and detonated his charge."
An AFP reporter saw people burying body parts on the median
strip which cuts the wide boulevard in two, just a short distance from the site of a thwarted car bomb attack on Tuesday. Hours later, another car bomb attack apparently aimed at a US military patrol shook the capital's upmarket Mansur neighbourhood, witnesses told AFP. There was no immediate report of any casualties.
Fresh fighting erupted in the city's Sunni stronghold of Haifa street, which is a mixture of posh high-rises and impoverished alleyways harbouring a loose alliance of Saddam Hussein loyalists and Islamic insurgents.
Three US soldiers were injured when their Blackhawk helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing late yesterday at Talil Airbase near the southern city of Nasiriyah immediately after takeoff.
"Initial reports do say the aircraft is severely damaged and the cause is under investigation," a military spokeswoman said. Meanwhile, US President George W Bush defended his invasion of Iraq in March 2003 at the United Nations General Assembly. He said the United States had enforced "the just demands of the world" by ousting Saddam in a war that has, however, left world opinion still
bitterly divided.
"The UN and its member nations must respond to (Iraqi) Prime Minister (Iyad) Allawi's request and do more to help build an Iraq that is secure, democratic, federal and free," Bush said. US Secretary General Kofi Annan reminded the assembly that Iraqi prisoners had been "disgracefully abused", in a reference to the Abu Ghraib scandal of US troops' behaviour towards Iraqis, and made veiled references to the United States in a wide-ranging speech
calling on all nations to obey the rule of law.
Meanwhile, South Korea announced it had completed the deployment of 2,800 troops in Iraq and added that 800 more soldiers would be dispatched in November, making the Asian country the third largest contributor to coalition troops.
The Korean forces are expected to engage in relief and
reconstruction work only and avoid combat.
AFP
© Copyright 2004 by Merlea Investments
Top of Page
|
|
|
|
