Posted on 02/08/2005 10:52:22 AM PST by nickcarraway
Four Egyptian engineers who had been abducted in the Iraqi capital were freed, as a new Internet statement raised hope Italian reporter Giuliana Sgrena could also soon be liberated.
As Iraq saw a new day of violent strikes against the security forces, Egyptian embassy sources and the telecoms company that employs the four hostages announced they had been freed.
The four were held up outside their Baghdad home on Sunday morning and bundled into waiting cars by gunmen. They worked for a subsidiary of Egyptian telecom giant Orascom.
Orascom's chairman Naguib Saris told CNN that two of the four had been freed by US and Iraqi forces in a joint operation while the others had managed to escape from their captors, one of whom was arrested.
"The forces, when they went to free them, managed to catch one of the kidnappers. They freed the first two (hostages) and the other two managed to escape of their own work," kidnappers told the channel from Algiers.
"The kidnappers put them in the trunk of the car and they (the two) managed to break through this car and run away. They were shot at but they managed to come to our offices," he said.
The Italian hostage was seized two days earlier near a Baghdad mosque where she had been working on a story.
An Islamist group that says it is holding the correspondent for the left-wing daily Il Manifesto and had threatened to kill her, said in an internet statement that she would be freed soon.
"After the religious committee in the Organization for Jihad investigated Giuliana Sgrena, it was established unquestionably that the Italian captive is not spying for the infidels in the Land of Two Rivers," said the statement.
Sgrena's colleagues and supporters had emphasised after her kidnapping that she had opposed the US-led invasion.
The statement said that, in response to an appeal by the top Sunni Muslim religious organisation in Iraq, "we in the Organization for Jihad will release the Italian captive in the next few days." The authenticity of the statement could not be independently verified.
The release came at the end of a day of suicide bombings, rocket attacks and shootings that left more than 30 dead.
Two suicide attacks in Mosul and Baquba were the deadliest against Iraqi security forces since the landmark January 30 election.
Both attacks were claimed in internet statements by militants loyal to Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
In the main northern city of Mosul, 12 policemen were killed and six others wounded when a suicide bomber lured them into a trap as they were waiting to collect their wages.
"The bomber was wearing a long coat. He called the young men over to him to gather around and he set off the bomb," said police Colonel Saad Aziz.
A civilian was killed and three wounded in a mortar attack in the same city, medical sources said.
A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into the main police headquarters for Diyala province in Baquba, killing 11 and wounding 16, said a doctor at the city's hospital.
A group of men about to enlist for the police were waiting at the gate.
A few hours later, seven mortar rounds rained down on houses near the police headquarters, killing an eight-year-old child.
Another five people were killed in separate attacks across the Sunni Arab heartland north of the capital.
The US military announced that one soldier was killed and two others wounded in a roadside bomb attack north of Baghdad on Sunday.
A pipeline carrying crude oil from northern Iraq to the key refinery of Baiji was hit by an insurgent rocket.
Amid the violence, partial election results showed the United Iraqi Alliance, backed by Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, set to get more than half of the seats in the new 275-member national assembly.
Iraq's main Kurdish coalition took second place in the vote count, winning just over one million votes from Dohuk and Suleimaniyah -- two of the three provinces in the Kurdish autonomous region.
The Shiite alliance has 2,244,237 votes out of about 4.36 million votes counted, the election commission said.
Though its share has fallen to about 51 percent of the vote, it should still get an absolute majority in the assembly as many of the votes still to be counted are from Shiite strongholds in the south.
The alliance was even a surprise leader in the mainly Sunni Arab province of Salaheddin, where election commission figures indicated a very low turnout.
Sunni Arab militant groups had threatened bloody retaliation against anyone who participated in the elections.
Most major Sunni parties also called for a boycott of the vote and leading Sunni clerics on Saturday demanded a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops as their price for joining talks on a new constitution.
Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will press NATO allies to help out more in Iraq when he attends a meeting of alliance defence ministers in France on Thursday.
The US-led invasion of Iraq opened bitter international divisions, but US officials said they hoped the election would ease resistance to a larger NATO role.
Freed? I heard they were rescued in a raid by US forces...
"After the religious committee in the Organization for Jihad investigated Giuliana Sgrena, it was established unquestionably that the Italian captive is not spying for the infidels in the Land of Two Rivers," said the statement.
Sgrena's colleagues and supporters had emphasised after her kidnapping that she had opposed the US-led invasion.
Hey terrorists...keep her. She's obviously one of YOURS.
If the hostages aren't Islamic, there's no chance in h*ll they'll be freed.
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