World

Tribal Raid Frees Hostages In Iraq

August 4, 2004 / 9:20 PM EDT / CBS/AP

A tribal chief in the turbulent city of Fallujah led a raid that freed four Jordanian hostages kidnapped a week ago, the chief said Wednesday, while a militant group apparently freed two Turkish truck drivers whose company agreed to pull out from Iraq.

Meanwhile, the interim government is set to vote on a law to offer amnesty to some insurgents, although CBS News Correspondent Elaine Cobbe reports that objections from Iraqi clerics and the American authorities have watered it down so much it may be unworkable.

In other developments:

The international Red Cross says Saddam Hussein has spoken at length with a visiting delegation. He's also said to have written a new message to his family. The team, which included a doctor, met with the former Iraqi president during a routine visit to talk about 100 "high-value detainees" at a prison in Iraq. A spokeswoman declined to comment on Saddam's health. There have been reports he has a chronic prostate infection or has suffered a stroke.

In the northern city of Mosul, fierce fighting broke out Wednesday between Iraqi police and militants after dozens of masked men with assault rifles and rocket propelled grenade launchers moved through the streets. Police headed to the area where the gunmen were seen and a gunbattle broke out, witnesses said. Officials say 12 Iraqis have been killed and 26 wounded.

Insurgents Tuesday killed seven Iraqi security personnel and the U.S. military said guerrillas killed four Americans. Two other Americans were killed in non-hostile incidents. The U.S. deaths brought at least 919 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq.

A truck raced toward an Iraqi checkpoint guarding Kharnabad Bridge north of the city of Baqoubah, officials said. The truck attempted to merge into a U.S. military convoy heading toward the bridge, but a soldier driving one of the vehicles forced it off the road before it detonated, said Maj. Neal O'Brien, a U.S. Army spokesman. No U.S. troops were injured, he said, but four members of the Iraqi National Guard were killed and five others wounded.

Appearing on the CBS News Early Show, retired Gen. Tommy Franks — who directed the 2003 invasion of Iraq — said the military didn't know how much resistance to expect after U.S. troops defeated the Iraqis militarily.

"You could have combat operations major combat operations and then wind up with the Iraqis stepping forward immediately and the personality emerging and have no problem. Or you could get up there and look around and say, 'Oh, serious insurgency,'" Franks said. "Didn't know which way it would go."

Asked if there were experts before the war who thought the U.S. needed more troops on the ground, Franks said "lots and lots."

But while "it has always been true that the guy with the largest army is going to have the greatest long-term chance for something," Franks noted that, "a lot of times when you see that, you're not able to factor in the necessity of surprise, the need to be able to get someplace very quickly ort practicalities of diplomacy in the Middle East."

Sheik Haj Ibrahim Jassam said he received word on Tuesday evening that four kidnapped Jordanians were being held in a house on the edge of the city of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad. He said that once the raid began, the kidnappers fled the house and the four men were brought to his house unharmed.

"I called upon my brothers and tribesmen to free the hostages, so we raided the house last night," Jassam told The Associated Press. "I'm glad that those innocent Muslims were freed."

A brother of one of the four Jordanian hostages, Mohammed abu Jaafar, said that he'd spoken by telephone with his brother Ahmad, who told him: "Now I am free. I was in the hands of evil people. Now I am in the hands of good people."

The four men were abducted by a group calling itself "Mujahedeen of Iraq, the Group of Death." The kidnapping became known on July 27 when Dubai Television broadcast a video tape showing four men holding what appeared to be Jordanian identification cards.

Families of the four — three drivers and a businessman — had previously said the kidnappers promised to free the Jordanians after their relatives and fellow truck drivers staged an anti-American demonstration last Friday.

The four were only the latest truck drivers to be taken hostage in Iraq as part of insurgents' campaign to spoil reconstruction work. Kidnappers have found the poorly protected drivers easy targets, seizing them at will with little concern about their country of origin.

Their strategy has also been effective: Several companies in the Middle East have halted work in Iraq after employees were kidnapped. In the insurgents' biggest coup, the Philippines withdrew its small troop contingent from Iraq a month early to win the release of a captured Filipino truck driver.

Turkey's truckers association said it was halting deliveries to U.S. forces in Iraq in hopes of freeing two men after the Monday release of a video showing militants shooting and killing a Turkish truck driver, Murat Yuce.

Turkey's foreign minister said Wednesday that militants have released the other two Turkish hostages. The minister tells a Turkish news agency they're "happy" about the truckers' release.

Earlier, the Arab satellite network al-Jazeera reported that the al Qaeda-linked movement of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Tawhid and Jihad group, said it will free its two Turkish hostages.

The amnesty was proposed in the hope that it would lead some insurgents to come back to the fold and join Iraq's new army, but the deal is now so vague many fear only common criminals will be granted an amnesty, which will just aggravate the growing problem of lawlessness in Iraq.

"The amnesty is not appropriate, because it is meant to be an amnesty for criminals and looters," Ahmed al-Shebani, a spokesman for the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose militia led an uprising against American forces this spring, told The New York Times. "We are a resistance, so it does not concern us."