Seven South Korean members of a church group who were kidnapped by an armed group in Iraq have been freed.
An unnamed Iraqi group detained eight Korean church ministers yesterday and released one later, South Korea's SBS news reported. US-ally South Korea has 600 military engineers and medics in Iraq and plans to send 3,000 more for reconstruction.
Al Jazeera television aired a video earlier today showing three Japanese dressed in civilian clothes it said were taken hostage by an Iraqi group that vowed to kill them if Japan does not leave Iraq.
The television station said a statement by the hitherto unknown Iraqi group called Saraya al-Mujahideen had given Japan three days from the airing of the video to withdraw its troops from Iraq before it killed the hostages, who included one woman.
The Japanese government said this afternoon it had no intention of pulling out of Iraq.
Two Israeli Arabs, one of whom is an employee of a US aid agency, have also been kidnapped in Iraq. Iranian television showed videotape of the two men, identifying them as Nabil George Yaakob Razuq and Ahmed Yassin Tikati. It said they were kidnapped by the Ansar a-Din group.
Israeli media reports said the two men were from Israeli-annexed Arab East Jerusalem, where Palestinians have the option of acquiring Israeli citizenship.
