Relatives of a kidnapped member of Iraqi Prime Minister Mr Iyad Allawi's family have begged her captors to release her saying she was pregnant, in a videotape aired by Lebanese satellite channel LBC yesterday.
The prime minister's 75-year-old first cousin, Mr Ghazi Allawi, was seized along with his wife and daughter-in-law as they were leaving their home in Baghdad on Tuesday.
A previously unknown Islamist group threatened to kill them in 48 hours unless Iraq's interim government called off the US-led assault on Falluja. The government said it would not be influenced by the abductions. On the tape, weeping relatives of one of the women, identified as Ms Wasnaa Mohammed Jaafar Husseini, said she was nine months pregnant and begged her captors to free her.
"She's in her last month of pregnancy," said a sobbing woman who identified herself as Wasnaa's mother. "In the name of God, by Islam and the holiness of Ramadan, and the holy Koran, please let her go," she said, struggling to speak.
A second crying woman who identified herself as Wasnaa's sister said: "I implore the parties responsible to give me my sister back safely . . . she's pregnant, she can't hold up to this." The kidnapping came a day after Mr Allawi ordered a full-scale assault on rebel-held Falluja which his government and the US military say has become a haven for foreign Islamist fighters working with Iraqi insurgents.
Many hundreds of Iraqis have been kidnapped in the chaos that has swept Iraq since the US invasion and occupation of the country, with wealthy professionals and their relatives targeted by abductors who typically have sought ransom.
Scores of foreigners have also been seized, and some of them handed over to Islamist militant groups who have threatened to kill them if political demands such as the withdrawal of US and other occupying troops are not met.