- Iraqi gunmen took three Japanese civilians captive yesterday
and threatened to burn them alive unless Tokyo withdrew its forces, sharply
raising the stakes in the uprising that has swept central and southern
Iraq.
-
- As coalition troops fought house-to-house to subdue the
town of Fallujah, having earlier lost control of several towns, the insurgents
opened up a new front with a rash of kidnappings.
-
- Footage of the Japanese, broadcast on the al-Jazeera
satellite network, showed masked men holding knives to their throats as
well as pictures of their passports.
-
- The hostages are Miss Nahoko Takato, 34, Noriaki Imai,
18, both aid workers, and Soichiro Koriyama, 32, a press cameraman.
-
- The gunmen standing behind them in a bullet-scarred room
said they were members of the Mujahideen Brigades, a hitherto unknown group.
-
- They issued a statement to Japan: "Three of your
children have fallen into our hands and we give you two options - withdraw
your forces or we will burn them alive and feed them to the fighters. You
have three days."
-
- Other non-Iraqis appeared to be among the hostages, raising
speculation that one could be Gary Teeley, 37, a British contractor seized
on Tuesday near Nasiriyah. A Canadian aid worker has also been kidnapped.
-
- Mr Teeley, a father of five, moved to Dubai more than
two years ago and was in charge of a laundry contract for a Qatari firm
at a US base. No demand has been made by his captors.
-
- Rejecting the ultimatum, Japan's chief cabinet secretary,
Yasuo Fukuda, said: "Our Self-Defence Forces are providing reconstruction
support for Iraqi people so there is no reason to withdraw.
-
- "If innocent civilians are taken hostage as reported,
it is unforgivable. We demand their immediate release."
-
- Kidnapping and robbery, always a danger on Iraq's lawless
roads, has been elevated to an act of resistance against the coalition.
-
- Iranian television reported that two Israeli Arabs, one
of them working for an American aid agency, had been captured by a group
calling itself Ansar al-Din group.
-
- Seven pastors from South Korea were taken prisoner while
driving along the main highway linking Baghdad with the Jordanian capital,
Amman. Gunmen detained them for several hours before releasing them unharmed.
The highway runs past Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, and directly
through the area where the fighting was most intense.
-
- Two marines were killed as US forces fought street by
street to root out militants after gunmen killed four US civilian security
contractors and publicly mutilated their bodies last week. Six US soldiers
have died in the last two days.
-
- The area has been sealed off since Monday and bombarded
by helicopters, jet fighters and heavy artillery.
-
- Hospitals in Fallujah reported that about 300 Iraqis
had died in the fighting, the heaviest since the war last year. Appeals
for medicine, food and blood donations have been broadcast by mosques across
Baghdad.
-
- Sympathy for Fallujah's 250,000 people, who are overwhelmingly
Sunni, transcends Iraq's sectarian divide and is causing deep anger against
the Americans.
-
- Followers of the militant Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr
have seized full or partial control of four cities and towns - Kut, Najaf,
Karbala and Kufa - since the uprising began last weekend.
-
- America's most senior general in Iraq promised to retake
them. The eviction of Sadr's Mahdi army from Kut is particularly important
after the gunmen drove a Ukrainian battalion out of the provincial capital
on Wednesday.
-
- Gen Ricardo Sanchez said that Operation Resolute Sword
would be launched to retake Kut "imminently". He said coalition
forces would mount "deliberate, precise and robust combat operations
to separate, isolate and destroy the enemy wherever we find him".
-
- The Shi'ite festival of Arba'een has drawn hundreds of
thousands of pilgrims from across the world to Najaf and Karbala, complicating
any plans for a military offensive.
-
- Sadr is believed to be inside the Shrine of Ali, in Najaf,
one the holiest sites of the Shi'ite strand of Islam.
-
- Polish and Bulgarian forces came under heavy attack in
Karbala. Their base in the city hall was hit by small arms fire and rocket-propelled
grenades from a large force of Sadr militiamen. But the coalition forces
suffered no casualties and were not dislodged.
-
- The past five days of fighting have claimed the lives
of 50 coalition soldiers and about 460 Iraqis, prompting critics of President
George W Bush to draw comparisons with the quagmire of the Vietnam war.
-
- But Gen Sanchez said: "I don't see any shadows of
Vietnam in Iraq."
-
- Earlier in the day, Nuri Badran, Iraq's interim interior
minister, resigned. He was responsible for the 70,000-strong police force,
which has failed to resist Sadr's militias. In some cases police have sided
with the gunmen against US forces.
-
- Mr Badran said he was resigning because Paul Bremer,
the American administrator, was "not satisfied with the performance
of the interior ministry".
-
- Recent events have shown that Iraq will be dependent
on the coalition to provide security long after the June 30 deadline for
the transfer of sovereignty.
-
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