Deadly Attacks Across Iraq
Shootings and bombings across Iraq on Monday pointed to widespread instability as the interim prime minister insisted his homeland's chaos would be controlled — while adding that he had been the target of four assassination attempts, the most recent just five days ago.
Gunmen killed a Muslim cleric who was entering a mosque in Baghdad to perform noon prayers Monday — the second attack on a cleric belonging to an influential association of Sunni clerics in as many days — the group said.
Meanwhile, a Web site posting claimed that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group has beheaded one of the American hostages in Iraq, but the claim could not be verified.
A short statement, posted by a Web site contributor who has put up past statements signed in the name of Tawhid and Jihad, said that al-Zarqawi, "God protect him, has beheaded the first American. The group will next behead the others."
The Web claim came the day after the airing of a videotape showing the beheading of three Kurdish hostages.
Elsewhere, insurgents fired on a U.S. patrol with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades Monday, killing one American soldier, the U.S. military said. The soldier, who was serving with the Army's 1st Infantry Division, was killed near Ash Sharqat, 168 miles north of Baghdad, a military statement said. At least 1,029 Americans have been killed in Iraq.
In other developments:
The two clerics belonged to the Association of Muslim Scholars, a grouping of conservative clerics that opposes the U.S. presence in Iraq and has emerged as a powerful representative of Iraq's Sunni minority.
Sheik Mohammed Jadoa al-Janabi, was killed in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite al-Baya neighborhood. He was unarmed and had no security guards, said one official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Late Sunday, another member of the association, Sheik Hazem al-Zeidi, was kidnapped and killed as he left a mosque in Baghdad's Sadr City district. Two bodyguards were also taken hostage and later released, according to Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abdul-Jabbar, a senior member of the group.
No one claimed responsibility for the killings, and there have been no arrests.
Insurgents have used kidnappings and spectacular bombings as their weapons of choice in a 17-month campaign to undermine the interim government and force the United States and its allies out of Iraq.
The Tawhid and Jihad group, led by al-Zarqawi, was threatening to behead Americans Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong and Briton Kenneth Bigley on Monday unless Iraqi women are released from two U.S.-run prisons.
The threat came in a video aired Saturday, which showed the three construction contractors blindfolded and said they would be killed in 48 hours, though no exact time for the deadline was given. The three were snatched on Thursday from their Baghdad home.
The British government and Bigley's brother, Philip, appealed for their release in statements broadcast repeatedly Monday on pan-Arab satellite television station Al-Arabiya.
"Ken has enjoyed working in the Arab world for the last 10 years in civil engineering and has many Arabic friends and is understanding and appreciative of the Islamic culture. He wanted to help the ordinary Iraqi people and is just doing his job," Philip Bigley said. "At the end of the day, we just want him home safe and well, especially for my mum Lil."
Hensley's wife, Patty, told Arab news station Al-Jazeera that she learned of her husband's abduction through media reports. She said he, like all Americans in Iraq, was there to help the Iraqi people.
Tawhid and Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings and hostage takings, is demanding the release of Iraqi women from Abu Ghraib and Umm Qasr prisons.
Abu Ghraib is the prison where U.S. soldiers were photographed sexually humiliating male prisoners. The U.S. military says no women are held at either facility, though it says it is holding two female "security prisoners" elsewhere.
Despite the unrelenting violence, Allawi said Sunday that his interim government is determined "to stick to the timetable of the elections," which are due by Jan. 31.
Last week, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned there could not be "credible elections if the security conditions continue as they are now."
More than 100 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq, some for lucrative ransoms, and at least 26 have been executed. At least five other Westerners are currently being held hostage here, including an Iraqi-American man, two female Italian aid workers and two French reporters.
The appeals came the day after another Sunni group — Ansar al-Sunna — posted a grisly videotape on the Internet purporting to show militants beheading three Iraqi Kurd hostages accused of transporting military vehicles to a base in Taji, just north of Baghdad. The decapitated bodies were found on a road near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, said Sarkawt Hassan, security chief in the Kurdish town of Sulaimaniyah.