- NAJAF/BAGHDAD (Agencies)
-- Radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada Al Sadr's militia has kidnapped 18 Iraqi
police officers in hopes of using them as leverage to force authorities
to free detained militants, even as attacks across Iraq killed three national
guardsmen, a police chief and four US soldiers, while saboteurs blasted
a northern oil pipeline, halting limited exports via Turkey.
-
- The kidnappings took place as Al Sadr aides accused authorities
of trying to arrest top officials from the cleric's Mahdi Army. The new
tensions appear to threaten a fragile ceasefire between the Mahdi Army
and Iraqi authorities.
-
- Mahdi Army militiamen have seized 18 police officers
and two police cars in recent days, hoping to get some of their comrades
out of prison. Najaf governor Adnan Al Zurufi, confirmed a number of policemen
were abducted.
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- The three Iraqi national guardsmen were killed when a
suicide bomber blew up a car at a checkpoint on a road into the northern
city of Baquba, wounding another six guardsmen, security and hospital sources
said. ìA car drove up to the Sabtiyah checkpoint and before the
national guardsmen could search it the driver blew up the vehicle,î
said police Captain Sabah Nassif Jassem.
-
- Rescuers also found the remains of a body that appeared
to be that of the bomber, less than a week after a massive suicide attack
in Baquba killed 70. The latest US fatalities raised to some 680 the number
of American troops killed in combat since the invasion of Iraq was launched
in March 2003, according to a Pentagon tally.
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- Police chief gunned down
-
- Two marines died of wounds sustained in Al Anbar province,
while conducting what the American military described as ìsecurity
and stability operationsî. Another two soldiers were killed in Baghdad
on Monday. In Baghdad, district police chief Colonel Moyad Bashar Al Shamari
was killed on his way to work when his car ran over a makeshift bomb near
the Abu Jafaar Al Mansur Square.
-
- The latest of a string of sabotage attacks, aimed at
thwarting Iraq's efforts to get back on its feet, brought oil exports through
the pipeline from the northern fields of Kirkuk to the Turkish port of
Ceyhan to a halt. A bomb planted near a network of pipelines at Al Fateha,
west of Kirkuk, at dawn damaged the main pipeline to Ceyhan and stopped
exports.
-
- Separately, a French aid group confirmed that four Iraqi
employees in the southern city of Samawa were killed while travelling to
Najaf.
-
- Meanwhile, in Iraq's hostage-taking saga, Amman said
that another Jordanian has been kidnapped in Iraq, bringing to seven the
number of Jordanians held in the strife-torn country. Kidnappers holding
Lebanese businessman Antoine Antoun in Iraq have also been in touch with
one of his employees over their conditions for his release.
-
- India said that talks for the release of seven other
men working for a Kuwaiti firm, including three Indians, were likely to
be successful.
-
- Jordan's King Abdullah II told Al Arabiya satellite channel
that he was prepared to send troops to Iraq if Baghdad requested an Arab
force to replace US-led multinational forces. But a previously unknown
militant group Tawhid warned Saudi Arabia not to follow through on such
a proposal, threatening attacks if its warning was not heeded.
-
- Meanwhile, a hearing began in a US military court for
pregnant Private Lynndie England, charged with abusing and humiliating
detainees at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. She could face a 38-year-old
jail term.
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