IRAQ: A militant group said yesterday it had killed 11 Iraqi national guardsmen in the south of the country. It showed footage on a website to prove it had beheaded one soldier and shot 10 others.
The deaths followed the massacre at the weekend of about 50 guardsmen north-east of Baghdad. Jaish al-Ansar al-Sunnah, which has claimed responsibility for a number of suicide bombings and kidnappings, said the soldiers had been captured south of Baghdad on the road to Hilla.
"After . . . [ hearing] their confessions, it turned out this group was responsible for guarding the crusader American troops," the group said. The attack was in revenge for "the blood of our elderly, women and children that is shed daily in Falluja, Samarra, Ramadi and elsewhere on your hands and the hands of those you work with".
The hostage crisis also deepened yesterday after al-Jazeera TV aired a video of a Polish woman hostage, flanked by two armed militants. The kidnappers demanded the withdrawal of Polish troops from Iraq, a demand rejected by the Polish government. Dressed in a pink blouse, the grey-haired woman, who has not been named, was seated in front of a banner of the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Brigades. In September the group claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of 10 Turkish hostages, who were released this month.
Last night al-Jazeera reported Iraqi militants kidnapped two truck drivers from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh who worked with US forces in Iraq. The network showed a video tape from the Islamic Army in Iraq showing the men, employed by a Kuwaiti company, whom the group said had been captured just before driving into a US military base.
Three days ago militants, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, threatened to behead a young Japanese man within 48 hours unless Tokyo brought its troops home.
The captors of the Dublin-born aid worker Ms Margaret Hassan have demanded that British troops withdraw. The organisation Ms Hassan works for, Care International, said on Wednesday it had closed down its Iraq operation.
Like Ms Hassan, the Polish woman is said to have been in Iraq for many years and has Iraqi citizenship. But Polish officials said they had no record of her.
"The only Polish citizens in Iraq were those who had been married to Iraqi men and had been here for many years," said one Polish official in Baghdad.
On Tuesday, up to 20 insurgents attacked the compound in Baghdad where the British engineer Kenneth Bigley, who was later murdered, was seized. Two Iraqi guards were killed during the ensuing firefight before US troops arrived to secure the area.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi interim Prime Minister, Mr Iyad Allawi, urged the people of Falluja yesterday to grab their chance to avert a military assault on the city. "This chance could be the last," a statement from his office said. "[ The Prime Minister] asks the leaders and notables of Falluja to use it to find a political solution to the problem." Iraq's US-backed interim government has said it would retake all rebel-held areas ahead of elections due to take place by the end of January.