BAGHDAD, Iraq – Insurgents slaughtered 11 Iraqi soldiers, beheading one, then shooting the others execution-style, and declared on an Islamic militant Web site Thursday that Iraqi fighters will avenge “the blood” of women and children killed in U.S. strikes on the guerrilla stronghold of Fallujah.
The wave of foreigner kidnappings claimed another victim – a Polish woman in her 60s who is married to an Iraqi. Her captors demanded that Poland withdraw its 2,400 soldiers and that the U.S.-led coalition free all Iraqi women held at Abu Ghraib prison.
The killing of the 11 Iraqi National Guardsmen was claimed by the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, which posted a videotape of their brutal deaths on its Web site Thursday along with a warning for all Iraqi police and soldiers to desert or face death. The militants said earlier the soldiers were abducted this week on the road between Baghdad and Hillah, 60 miles to the south.
After forcing each of the soldiers to state his name and unit, the militants forced one of them to the ground and sawed off his head. The others were forced to kneel with their hands bound as a gunman fired shots into the back of their heads.
A voice on the videotape warned all Iraqi soldiers and police to “repent to God, abandon your weapons, go home and beware of supporting the apostate Crusaders or their followers, the Iraqi government, or else you will only find death.”
Elsewhere, two more American soldiers were killed – one in a car bombing in Baghdad and the other in an ambush near Balad, 40 miles north of the capital. At least 1,109 U.S. service members have died since President Bush launched the Iraq war in March 2003.
U.S. Marines also captured 16 suspected insurgents in a sweep south of Baghdad, bombed a suspected insurgent safe house in Fallujah and clashed with guerrillas in Ramadi.
In Tokyo, authorities said they had failed to enlist the help of a prominent Iraqi cleric in trying to free a 24-year-old Japanese hostage.
An al-Qaida affiliate led by Jordanian terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi threatened Tuesday to behead Shosei Koda in 48 hours unless Japan withdraws its troops – a demand rejected by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Also Thursday, a videotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television showed two truck drivers – from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka – who were taken hostage. Al-Jazeera said the men, shown on the tape wearing flak jackets, worked for a Kuwaiti company.
The video of the Polish hostage, also aired on Al-Jazeera, showed a middle-aged woman with gray hair wearing a polka-dotted blouse sitting in front of two masked gunmen, one of whom was pointing a pistol at her head.
The woman was identified as Teresa Borcz-Kalifa by one of her former superiors at the Polish Embassy in Baghdad, where she worked in the 1990s. Leszek Adamiec told Poland’s private Radio Zet that Borcz-Kalifa worked in the consular section until 1994.
The woman, a longtime resident with Iraqi citizenship, was believed to have been abducted Wednesday night from her home in Baghdad, Polish authorities said.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
