Free Republic

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian aid worker held hostage last month in Iraq said guerrillas there were right to fight U.S.-led forces and their Iraqi "puppet government." In comments that were bound to annoy Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government, Simona Torretta also called on Rome to withdraw the troops it sent to Iraq to support its U.S. ally. "I said it before the kidnapping and I repeat it today," she told Corriere della Sera newspaper in an interview published Friday. "You have to distinguish between terrorism and resistance. The guerrilla war is justified, but I am against the kidnapping of...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Kidnappers have released up to 12 foreigners taken hostage in Iraq, a member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council said Monday. Meanwhile, two U.S. troops and seven employees of American contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Houston-based Halliburton, were missing following an attack "two days ago" on a convoy near Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said Monday. He refused to say whether they had been abducted. More than 30 foreigners from at least 12 countries — including a Mississippi man whose fate also was unclear — have been kidnapped in recent days...