IRAQ: An American hostage was shown pleading for his life on a videotape yesterday, as insurgents killed 11 people, including a top Iraqi judge, ahead of next week's election.
The undated video shows American contractor Roy Hallums sitting cross-legged in civilian clothes, with a gun to his head, begging Arab leaders to secure his release from captivity.
The release of the tape comes amid a growing campaign of intimidation and violence by Sunni-led insurgents bent on disrupting the January 30th poll.
"I'm asking for help because my life is in danger because it's been proved that I work for American forces," said 56-year-old Mr Hallums.
"I'm not asking for any help from President Bush because I know of his selfishness and unconcern to those who've been pushed into this hell hole," he said.
Gunmen seized Mr Hallums from his Baghdad home, along with five other colleagues, in November.
Four of those have since been freed, while the whereabouts of a Filipino remain unknown. All worked for a Saudi Arabian food contracting firm.
Since the US forces stormed the rebel stronghold of Fallujah in November, the brutal campaign of kidnapping and beheading Westerners has lessened somewhat, suggesting that militant cells behind the attacks have been disrupted.
The wave of hostage taking reached a brutal apogee with the murders of the British hostage Kenneth Bigley and aid-worker Margeret Hassan in October.
Recent attacks by insurgents have focused on Iraqi officials and election workers. Yesterday top Iraqi judge Qasi Hashim Shameri was killed along with a family member in an ambush as they left their home in eastern Baghdad during morning rush-hour traffic.
At least nine others were killed in attacks on police stations and polling centres across the country, the Iraqi police said.
The judge's assassination came hours after a top US general said insurgents might be planning a "spectacular" attack before or during Sunday's first post-Saddam elections.
Brig Gen Erv Lessel, deputy director of operations in Iraq, told CNN there had been a 50 per cent decline in attacks in recent days but that the lull was not expected to last.
Despite that, he said Iraqis would not be deterred from voting by a new audio tape declaring all-out war on the election from al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
In the tape, aired on Sunday, Zarqawi berated Iraq's long-oppressed Shia majority for embracing the poll and urged the Sunni minority to fight "infidel voters".
(Additional reporting by Reuters)