- MOSUL, Iraq (AFP) -- At least
14 people were killed, including a brother of the head of a militant Islamic
group, in fierce clashes here between insurgents and police, as six foreign
hostages were freed in Iraq.
-
- The fighting broke out at around noon (0800 GMT) on the
west bank of the Tigris River in Mosul as loud explosions and heavy gunfire
ricocheted across this northern city.
-
- "Khalid Sido, the brother of Mullah Krekar, was
killed during the clashes in the Yarmouk neighbourhood," said provincial
government spokesman Hazem Dalawi.
-
- Dalawi told reporters that US troops were also involved
in the clashes, but a military spokesman was unable to confirm that American
soldiers had been in action Wednesday in Mosul.
-
- Washington has raised concerns about Krekar's alleged
ties to terrorism, even though Norwegian prosecutors dropped terror charges
against the exiled Kurd.
-
- Krekar, whose real name is thought to be Fateh Najmeddin
Faraj, founded Ansar al-Islam in December 2001, but insists he has not
led the group -- allegedly linked to the Al-Qaeda terror network -- since
May 2002.
-
- Mosul's hospitals said 14 bodies, including those of
two women, were brought in along with 52 injured, mostly civilians.
-
- The regional governorate imposed a curfew from 3:00 pm
until Thursday morning in the city, which is home to 1.75 million people
mainly Sunni Muslim Arabs, with Kurdish, Christian and Turkmen minorities.
-
- At least five bridges were cut off as gunmen took up
positions in the southwest and police deployed on the bridges, in the worst
Mosul fighting since April when insurgents attacked the provincial government's
headquarters.
-
- Earlier a man and a woman were killed and two people
wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in the path of a US military convoy
in Mosul, police said.
-
- Further south, the release of four Jordanian and two
Turkish truck drivers offered a rare reprieve to the country's protracted
hostage crisis.
-
- Self-styled Iraqi mediator Ibrahim Jassem said he had
taken the four to the Jordanian field hospital in Fallujah, as Amman confirmed
the captives' release.
-
- "They are with me and they are in good health,"
he told AFP, but three of the hostages said they were too tired to speak.
-
- Only Ahmed Abu Jaafar managed to say he was in good health
and looked forward to being reunited with his family.
-
- Jassem said the four, snatched a week ago, were rescued
by Fallujah's insurgent leaders, the Advisory Council for the Mujahedeen.
-
- "The kidnappers ran away" when council members
burst into the house where the hostages were being held, he said, dismissing
the abductors as "criminals".
-
- In Turkey, delighted relatives celebrated after Foreign
Minister Abdullah Gul confirmed that two Turkish truck drivers had also
been released in Iraq.
-
- The Al-Jazeera satellite news channel earlier aired a
video tape in which the Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) group said
the two were freed after their employers "agreed to stop sending trucks
to American forces in Iraq".
-
- The men had been held by Tawhid militants loyal to Iraq's
alleged Al-Qaeda chief operative, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who have been
blamed for a string of kidnappings and grisly killings.
-
- The Turkish catering company Bilintur, which provides
services to the US army, announced Tuesday it was withdrawing its remaining
workers from Iraq, a day after a video on Islamist websites showed the
execution of a Turkish man identified as Bilintur employee Murat Yuce.
-
- Nevertheless, Turkey's international lorry drivers association
said Wednesday that several Turkish lorry drivers, among some 10,000 currently
in Iraq, were missing.
-
- "Around four or five of them haven't made contact
recently," said the head of the UND drivers' association, Cahit Soysal.
-
- The International Transporters' Association, which groups
most of Turkey's 900 land transport companies, has urged its members to
immediately stop transporting cargo to US troops in Iraq.
-
- In Najaf, the local governor said six policemen were
kidnapped by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr's militia, while the governor
of Al-Anbar province resigned after kidnappers released three of his sons
on condition he quit.
-
- 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/20040804/ts_afp/iraq_040804182056
|
