‘Last chance’ for hostages

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Kidnappers holding four Christian peace activists gave U.S. and Iraqi authorities a “last chance” to release all detainees in Iraq, threatening to kill the hostages if their demands were not met in a videotape broadcast on Saturday.

At least 22 people were killed in scattered violence across the country, including a U.S. soldier in a roadside bombing in Baghdad and 10 Iraqis in a bombing at a candy store in a mostly Shiite town south of the capital.

The hostages – two Canadians, an American and a Briton – were shown on the tape broadcast by Al-Jazeera looking gaunt and standing near a white wall in what appeared to be a house. Then the tape cuts away to another shot in which they were seated and talking, but their voices were not heard.

The pan-Arab station’s announcer said the group, the “Swords of Righteousness Brigades,” issued a statement warning it was the last chance for U.S. and Iraqi authorities to “release all Iraqi prisoners in return of freeing the hostages.”

“Otherwise, their fate will be death,” the statement added, without mentioning a deadline.

The broadcast of the Jan. 21-dated video capped a week in which two German engineers were abducted in the northern industrial city of Beiji, and the U.S. military released five Iraqi women who had been in military custody – a move demanded by the kidnappers of American reporter Jill Carroll to spare her life. The military said the prisoner release was routine and not in response to the ultimatum.

A Sunni Arab political leader meanwhile criticized Friday’s police crackdowns on Sunni neighborhoods in southern Baghdad, which saw about 60 people detained and three killed, apparently by insurgents.

“We condemn the treacherous and terrorist acts that have targeted and killed dozens of innocent people who were only guilty of rejecting the (U.S.-led) occupation,” Khalaf al-Ilyan said at a news conference. “Any government should defend its people, otherwise, why it should be called a government?”