A videotape showing men seated at gunpoint - purportedly kidnapped Iraqi soldiers - was aired on an Arabic television station Sunday, and it said they were threatened with death unless a detained Shiite leader is freed within 48 hours.
The video was from a group calling itself the Brigades of Mohammed bin Abdullah and claimed to have 25 captive members of the Iraqi National Guard, according to Al-Jazeera television.
The captors threatened to kill the 25 unless Hazem al-A'araji, a member of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's office in Baghdad, was released within 48 hours. On Saturday, U.S. forces raided the Baghdad houses al-A'araji and another senior al-Sadr aide, Raed al-Khadumi. Al-A'araji and his brother were taken to unknown location.
Meanwhile, Iraqi activists beheaded three Iraqi Kurds, showing their deaths in a video posted on a Web site on Saturday and denouncing Kurdish political parties for cooperating with Americans in Iraq.
The bodies of the three Kurds, members of the peshmerga militia of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, were located by a road outside the northern city of Mosul, said Sarkawt Hassan, security chief in the mainly Kurdish town of Sulaimaniyah.
The slaying of the three Kurds was claimed by the Ansar al-Sunna Army, a group that has targeted Iraqi Kurds in the past and that previously killed 12 Nepalese hostages, showing their deaths in footage released in August. (albawaba.com)
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
