- BAGHDAD (AFP) -- A top Iraqi
foreign ministry official was shot dead in Baghdad and a Lebanese diplomat
said insurgents butchered a Lebanese hostage and two locals working for
a foreign company in Iraq.
-
- In a rare piece of good news, seven kidnapped Turks were
set free.
-
- Bassam Kubba, an undersecretary for foreign affairs,
was gunned down outside his home as he left for work around 7:30 am (0330
GMT), ministry spokesman Thamer al-Azami told AFP.
-
- "Somebody opened fire on him ... He was tranferred
to Al-Numa hospital. He died there," Azami said, adding that Kubba's
driver was wounded.
-
- It was the first assassination of a top official since
the new caretaker government was unveiled on June 1.
-
- The US-led coalition has warned of rising violence in
the run up to Iraq's return to sovereignty at the end of the month.
-
- Insurgents have waged an assassination campaign against
police, civil servants and politicians, in a bid to discredit the US-led
occupation and their reconstruction efforts.
-
- Shiite politician Ezzedine Salim, who was rotating president
last month of the now dissolved Governing Council, was assassinated on
May 17 in a car bomb.
-
- Foreigners working in Iraq and locals employed by foreign
companies have also become prime targets, such as the Lebanese and two
Iraqis working for a telecoms firm who were kidnapped west of Bagdhad Thursday
and had their throats slashed.
-
- "Hussein Olayyan, from south Lebanon, and two Iraqis
... disappeared Thursday in the area around Fallujah," Lebanese Charges
d'Affaires Hassan Hijazi told AFP Saturday.
-
- "The Lebanese company, which had a contract with
the Iraqi government, contacted the Iraqi government and asked the embassy
to investigate," Hijazi said.
-
- Some drivers found their bodies brutally mutilated on
the roadside between Baghdad and Jordan on Friday.
-
- "Their throats were slit," the diplomat said.
-
- In contrast, seven Turkish construction workers kidnapped
a couple of days ago around the same area were released on Saturday and
are on their way home, the Turkish embassy in Baghdad said.
-
- "We received a statement from their employer, a
construction firm called Serka, that said the seven had been released and
are travelling back to Turkey," an official told AFP.
-
- One other Turk -- a lorry driver called Bulent Yanik,
who was kidnapped last week -- remains in Iraq, the official said.
-
- A kidnapping wave has swept Iraq since early April when
US forces launched an assault on the insurgent city of Fallujah and radical
Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr mounted a revolt against the coalition in central
and southern Iraq.
-
- In a small sign of improvement, the US-led coalition
and Iraq's newly appointed government were cheered Saturday by signs of
a softening in Sadr's anti-government stance and an apparent willingness
to negotiate with Iraq's incoming power.
-
- Sadr hinted through an aide speaking for him at a weekly
Friday sermon that he may be willing to negotiate with the Iraqi cabinet
provided a clear date for the withdrawal of US-led forces is set.
-
- "It would appear that Moqtada has in fact put an
order out to his people to knock it on the head," said a senior coalition
military official.
-
- Gurgis Sada, the spokesman for the caretaker government
that is due to become sovereign on June 30, also applauded the new rhetoric.
-
- "We welcome favourably Sadr's demands and we are
pleased to hear his support, remembering that prime minister Iyad Allawi's
cabinet is fundamentally opposed to the occupation," Sada told AFP.
-
- "We cannot accept the occupation under any form
and are working to end it," he said. However, that goal would only
be achieved through "coordination and cooperation between the government
and the multinational forces who will be here at the government's demand."
-
- In separate violence, two coalition soldiers and two
Iraqi policemen were wounded in two separate roadside bombings Saturday
morning at opposite ends of the restive Sunni Muslim city of Baquba, 60
kilometres (36 miles) northeast of Baghdad, a military spokesman said.
-
- Copyright © 2004 Agence France Presse. All rights
reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority
of Agence France Presse.
-
- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1504&ncid=1504&
e=1&u=/afp/20040612/ts_afp/iraq_us_040612125324\
|
