World

Beheadings, Bombs, Bloodshed

September 20, 2004 / 11:07 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Violence continued in several cities around Iraq, with U.S. warplanes striking Fallujah, explosions in Baghdad and Mosul and the murder of two clerics in separate shootings.

Meanwhile, a militant group posted a video on the Internet purporting to show militants sawing off the heads of three Iraqi members of a Kurdish party for cooperating with U.S. forces. Another group claimed to have kidnapped 15 members of the Iraqi National Guard.

Separately, the brother of a British man kidnapped last week along with two American colleagues pleaded for his release.

Elsewhere, police say a car bomb killed three people in the northern city of Mosul.

In other developments:

Gunmen attacked the car of a cleric belonging to the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, killing him and briefly taking his bodyguards hostage, the group said Monday. Sheik Hazem al-Zeidi was killed late Sunday after leaving a mosque in Baghdad's eastern slum of Sadr City, said Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abdul-Jabbar, a senior member of the group. The two bodyguards were taken hostage, but released early Monday, he said. They were not harmed.

Another cleric, Sheik Mohammed Jadoa al-Janabi, was killed in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite al-Baya neighborhood. He was unarmed and had no security guards.

Explosions rocked the northern part of Fallujah on Monday and American jets were seen flying over the city, witnesses said. At least two people were killed. The U.S. military had no immediate comment. U.S. warplanes have launched repeated attacks on Fallujah, hoping to hit insurgents linked to alleged terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Loud explosions shook the Iraqi capital Monday. Early in the morning, a roadside bomb exploded in Suq Hamada Street, near the insurgent stronghold of Haifa Street, which has been the scene of heavy fighting in recent days, Interior Ministry official Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said. No one was hurt in the blast. Around noon, a second blast rocked the city, which has seen almost daily attacks as insurgents battle to undermine the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and force the United States and its allies out of Iraq.

Rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called Monday for the release of 18 Iraqi National Guard members, purportedly kidnapped by masked gunmen who are demanding the release of a detained Shiite leader. "Muqtada al-Sadr denounced ... the kidnapping," said Sheik Ahmed al-Shaibany, al-Sadr' official spokesman. "Al-Sadr appealed to the hostage-takers to free them immediately."

Despite the unrelenting violence, Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said that his interim government was determined "to stick to the timetable of the elections," which are due by Jan. 31.

"January next, I think, is going to be a major blow to terrorists and insurgents," said Allawi, who spoke with reporters Sunday after a meeting with British leader Tony Blair in London. "We are adamant that democracy is going to prevail, is going to win in Iraq."

Allawi, a secular Shiite Muslim, has been insistent about holding elections on time because of pressure from Iraq's majority Shiite community and its most powerful cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who fears the interim arrangement will be prolonged.

Last week, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned there could not be "credible elections if the security conditions continue as they are now." Some 300 people have been killed in escalating violence over the past week, including bombings, street fighting and U.S. airstrikes.

Several cities in the Sunni Muslim heartland north and west of Baghdad are out of U.S. and Iraqi government control, with insurgents holding sway, particularly in the city of Fallujah. That raises questions on whether balloting can be held there — and the legitimacy of elections held without adequate Sunni participation.

Near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the decapitated bodies of the three slain Kurdish hostages were found on a road, said Sarkawt Hassan, security chief in the Kurdish town of Sulaimaniyah. He said the three were members of the peshmerga militia of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

The videotape, posted Sunday on a site known for its Islamic militant content, shows three young men, two of whom hold up identity cards. Seconds later, each has his throat slit and his head placed on the back of his body.

The Ansar al-Sunna Army — a Sunni militant group that said it killed 12 Nepalese hostages in August and carried out Feb. 1 suicide attacks against Kurdish political parties that killed 109 people — claimed responsibility for the beheadings in a statement with the video.

It said the three were KDP members snatched as they were transporting military vehicles to a base in Taji, 15 miles north of Baghdad.

The group said it was targeting Iraqi Kurdish parties because they have "sworn allegiance to the crusaders and fought and are still fighting Islam and its people."

The tape and the statement could not be independently verified.

In another hostage case, the British government and brother of a British man abducted in Iraq appealed for his release. Kenneth Bigley and two American colleagues were kidnapped in Baghdad last week by a group linked to al Qaeda. Monday is the day that the deadline for sparing their lives expires.

"We strongly appeal for any information that could help us in releasing Kenneth. We promise complete confidentiality and not to make public the identity of whoever provides such information," Foreign Office spokesman Dean McLoughlin said in Arabic, according to a translation provided by the Foreign Office.

The comments of McLoughlin, who spoke against a background picture of the Houses of Parliament, were broadcast repeatedly on Al-Arabiya television on Monday. Bigley's younger brother, Philip, used the same Dubai-based satellite channel to broadcast an appeal, which he recorded at a studio in Liverpool.

Philip Bigley said his brother loved the Arab world and had worked in Qatar, Oman, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

"He wanted to help the ordinary Iraqi people and is just doing his job," Philip Bigley said, according to a transcript issued by the Foreign Office. In the broadcast Monday, Philip's comments were voiced over in Arabic.