World

Militants: 12 Nepalese Executed

September 1, 2004 / 7:22 AM EDT / CBS/AP

A Web site linked to an Iraqi militant group showed a video of what is purported to be the killing of 12 Nepalese workers by militants who had kidnapped them.

The Nepalese Foreign Ministry said it could not confirm the report of the hostages' deaths.

The video showed a masked man apparently slitting the throat of a blindfolded man lying on the ground. Other footage showed an armed man firing single shots from an assault rifle at the back of the heads of 11 others.

A statement on the Web site vowed to keep fighting the Americans in Iraq.

"America today has used all its force, as well as the help of others, to fight Islam under the so-called war on terror, which is nothing but a vicious crusade against Muslims," the statement said.

In other recent developments:

The French government prepared for crisis talks Tuesday to save the lives of two journalists held hostage in Iraq, while aides to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for the release of the reporters as a deadline set by their kidnappers neared. Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot were shown on a video released by Al-Jazeera television late Monday pleading with President Jacques Chirac to save their lives by giving in to militants' demands to rescind a ban on head scarves in French schools.

The U.S. military said a roadside bomb attack on a U.S. military convoy just outside Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, killed a U.S. soldier and wounded two. A total of 974 U.S. service members have died since military operations began in March 2003, according to the U.S. Defense Department.

Unidentified gunmen shot dead Ibrahim Ismael, the head of the education department in the northern city of Kirkuk, said police Col. Sarhat Qadir. Three of Ismael's bodyguards were also wounded and were being treated at a local hospital.

Also Monday, there were conflicting reports on Iraq's vital oil exports. Iraqi oil officials and the governor of Basra state said exports were shut down after a rash of pipeline attacks. However, world oil prices decreased as traders said other reports suggested some oil was still flowing. At the New York Mercantile Exchange, October contracts for light sweet crude fell 90 cents a barrel to $42.28 — well below peaks above $48 a barrel in mid-August.

At the end of the four-minute video, a man reads another statement off-camera, vowing to fight the Iraqi government.

"We will work on exterminating them until the last fighter," he said.

Iyad Mansoor, director-general of the Morning Star Company, a Jordan-based services firm which had contracted the 12 Nepalese workers for jobs in Iraq, said he had no information on the beheading of the Nepalese captives.

"I'm shocked to hear such news," he told The Associated Press. "The last I heard was that the Nepalese government was in contact with Iraqi clergymen and others in an effort to set the 12 men free."

The Nepalese were traveling in two cars on Aug. 19, when they disappeared after crossing the border from Jordan. The following day, a group calling itself the Ansar al-Sunna Army claimed to be holding 12 Nepalese hostages and demanded Nepal stop sending workers to Iraq. The same group later claimed to have kidnapped and beheaded an Arab-American it said was a CIA spy, but the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad had said it was unaware of an American hostage.

Nepal has sent no troops to Iraq despite requests from the United States. Armed Nepalese personnel work for security firms guarding foreign contractors in Iraq.

At least 80 people have been kidnapped by insurgents and criminal gangs in Iraq in recent months. Some kidnappings were designed to extort ransom while others had the political motive of trying to force foreign troops and companies to leave the country.

Meanwhile, U.S. and Iraqi officials on Tuesday discussed ways to step up aid to Najaf and a war-battered neighborhood in Baghdad after rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on his followers to end their uprising.

Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi told tribal leaders from Baghdad's impoverished Sadr City slum — scene of fierce clashes between U.S. forces and al-Sadr's militia — that the government had allocated $115 million for projects there to improve public services including water, electricity and sewage.

"The resumption and the stability of life in your city and in the whole of Iraq is a very important issue," Allawi said.

James Jeffrey, the second-ranking U.S. diplomat in Baghdad, met with Gov. Adnan al-Zurufi in the holy city of Najaf to assess the "immediate needs of the city" and examine ways to rebuild it. Parts of Najaf, particularly around the Old City, were heavily damaged during three weeks of fighting.

Al-Sadr's aides said Monday the cleric had called for his fighters to stop attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces and was considering joining the political process.

Al-Sadr has backed off other commitments in the past, but a truce would be a major victory for Allawi by removing a serious insurgency and potentially bringing many of the Shiite cleric's followers into the effort to build a peaceful democracy.