Group reports killing 15 Iraqi guardsmen
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-01-22 22:33

Insurgents said they had executed 15 kidnapped Iraqi National Guardsmen for cooperating with U.S. forces, while the Iraqi government on Saturday insisted its security measures would be sufficient to protect crucial elections amid an escalation of violence.

An Iraqi policeman secures the area following a car bomb explosion in front of a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, Friday, Jan 21, 2005. A car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque in Baghdad Friday where worshippers were celebrating a major Muslim holiday, killing at least 14 people and wounding 40, police and hospital officials said, the country's latest violence in the lead-up to this month's elections. An elections poster on the ground features the National Coalition. [AP]

The interior minister announced new security measures, saying Baghdad's international airport would be closed Jan. 29 and 30, the day of the election, and that many parts of the country would be under a nighttime curfew for three days around the time of the balloting.

"There are dangers and there are threats to throw the elections process into chaos, but we hope that our security plan will be up to the standards. We don't rule out an escalation from the terrorist forces," the minister, Falah al-Naqib, told reporters.

Organizers extended the registration for overseas absentee voting in Iraq's national election by two days — to Tuesday — because the turnout so far in the weeklong campaign to allow Iraqis abroad to vote has been far below expectations, the International Organization for Migration said Saturday.

As of Thursday, fewer than one in 10 of the estimated 1.2 million eligible Iraqis living outside the country had registered.

Insurgents, meanwhile, said in a video released to Al-Arabiya television that they decided to release eight kidnapped Chinese construction workers as a "goodwill gesture."

The video showed the eight men shaking hands with an insurgent, who said he was from the Islamic Resistance Movement, Al-Numan Battalion. The men were seized by gunmen Tuesday as they were leaving the country on the western highway to Jordan.

There was no sign, however, that the eight had turned up anywhere by midday Saturday. The Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing said in a statement that officials had not made contact with the hostages.

U.S. soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Division walk past in front of a mosque during a house-by-house search looking for illegal weapons, in northern Iraqi city of Mosul, 370km of Baghdad. Militants freed eight Chinese hostages but said in a website that they had slain 15 Iraqi soldiers being held captive, after at least 27 people died in two car bomb attacks aimed at Iraq's Shiite majority. [AFP]

Kidnappings of foreigners in Iraq are again on the rise after a decline in recent months. A French journalist disappeared along with her Iraqi translator in Baghdad on Jan. 5. And a Brazilian engineer working on a reconstruction project at a power station in central Iraq was abducted Wednesday by gunmen in a highway ambush. That attack killed a British private security guard and an Iraqi man who were traveling with the engineer.

One of Iraq's fiercest rebel groups, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, announced in a Web statement that it had killed 15 Iraqi National Guard members seized about a week ago off a bus northwest of Baghdad — part of a campaign by the group against the Iraqi security forces ahead of the election.

"After the investigation, they confessed to the crimes they have committed with the crusader forces," the group said in the statement. "God's verdict has been carried out against them by shooting them....They should be a lesson to others."

The claim could not be independently verified, and the statement contained no photographs. Iraqi insurgents have targeted Iraqi military and security forces because they are less well-trained, less equipped and less protected than American and other multinational troops.

The Iraqi guardsmen were pulled from a bus Friday near their base in the town of Hit, 90 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Ansar al-Sunnah has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces, including a December suicide bombing that killed 22 people, most of them Americans, at a U.S. military mess tent at the northern city of Mosul.

The group is also blamed in the August executions of 12 Nepalese construction workers and twin suicide bombings against Kurds in February that killed 109 people.

Meanwhile, an official at Iraq's Defense Ministry confirmed Saturday that the ministry had transferred hundreds of millions of dollars from the Iraqi Central Bank to a financial institution in Beirut, Lebanon, to buy weapons — but did so in a legal manner and with the knowledge of multinational authorities.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, was responding to allegations by prominent Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, who demanded an investigation into a decision by Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan to shift $500 million in cash to a bank account in Beirut.

The official said the money transfer was "a normal process" made with the knowledge of the Iraqi Central Bank and the Finance Ministry and the U.S.-led multinational forces. He said he believed the amount was $500 million. There was no comment from the Multinational Forces-Iraq.

On Friday, Shaalan said Iraqi authorities would initiate criminal proceedings against Chalabi and hand him over to the Interpol after the Islamic religious holiday of Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice, which ends Sunday.

Shaalan said Chalabi "wanted to tarnish the image of the defense ministry."

Shaalan told Al-Jazeera Television that Chalabi would be turned over to Interpol because of his 1992 conviction in absentia by a Jordanian court for embezzling funds from a Jordanian bank that he founded and ran while in exile there. The bank collapsed in 1989 in a move that shook the foundations of the Jordanian financial system.

Chalabi has denied any wrongdoing and says the charges were fabricated because of his opposition to ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

In violence Saturday, guerillas attacked a building that is to be used as a polling station in the northern city of Mosul, blasting it with machine-gun fire and shoulder-fired rockets. Iraqi security troops guarding the building fired back. One civilian was hurt, a hospital official said.

Two Iraqi police officers were killed by a bomb south of Baghdad Friday night, U.S. Marines said.

In the city of Qaim, on the Syrian border, residents discovered a man's decapitated body in a marketplace. The head was placed on the back of the body with a handwritten note claiming he was an Iraqi Army soldier.

On Friday night, an ambulance packed with explosives blew up in a crowd of Shiite Muslims celebrating a wedding near Youssifiyah, a village 12 miles south of the capital. Seven people were killed and 16 wounded, including the bride and groom.

Salah al-Ameri, the groom's cousin, said the driver of the vehicle plowed into a garden where the wedding was taking place and detonated the vehicle.

Also Friday, a car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, killing at least 14 people.

Differences between Shiites and Sunnis over Iraq's upcoming elections have widened the gap between the two religious communities, raising fears of even more turmoil in a nation racked by insurgency.

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