BAGHDAD, 2 September 2004 — Violence and uncertainty over the fate of the two French hostages continued in Iraq, while militants freed seven truck drivers from India, Kenya and Egypt yesterday after holding them hostage for six weeks, offering a ray of hope to a dozen other foreigners still in captivity.
But violence continued to wrack Iraq as politician and disgraced former Pentagon favorite Ahmed Chalabi said he escaped unharmed after an assassination attempt yesterday in which two of his bodyguards were killed, two wounded and another two went missing.
In a reprieve for Ahmad Chalabi, the former Washington ally said a judge had informed him counterfeiting charges against him had been dropped.
Chalabi also told reporters an arrest warrant for his nephew Salem Chalabi, who is supervising Saddam Hussein’s trial, had been reduced to a summons.
Meanwhile, gunmen ambushed and killed a senior aide to Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr and two other people on the road between Najaf and Baghdad, an official from the movement and relatives said yesterday.
Sayed Bashir Al-Jazaeri was killed Tuesday when his car came under fire as he was returning from Najaf. Jazaeri headed one of Sadr’s local offices near the capital.
In Baghdad, insurgents fired mortars and rockets at a venue where the interim national assembly was holding its first session — a reminder of Iraq’s risky road to January elections.
Five mortar bombs landed just outside the fortified Green Zone compound before the assembly’s inaugural meeting. Two rockets exploded nearby after the session started. At least one civilian was wounded, officials said. The assembly’s task is to pave the way for elections and oversee the interim government.
But there was one spark of good news from Iraq when the seven truck drivers working for a Kuwaiti firm were freed. The Kuwaiti company, after the freed drivers arrived in Kuwait safely, said they had not ceased operations in Iraq and had paid more than half a million dollars as ransom to the kidnappers.
“We did not cease our operations in Iraq” as demanded by the kidnappers, Kuwait Gulf and Link (KGL) President Saeed Ismail Al-Dashti told reporters after receiving the seven drivers at Kuwait airport. Dashti said the company last paid half a million dollars to the abductors to secure the hostages’ release, but other payments had been made before.
Their release came a day after another militant group said it had slaughtered 12 Nepalis in the worst mass killing of captives in Iraq since a spate of kidnappings began in April.
Meanwhile, thousands of people rampaged through Katmandu yesterday, setting fire to a mosque and Arab targets and ransacking employment agencies to protest the killings of their compatriots.
One protester was killed and three injured when police opened fire to disperse an angry crowd that tried to storm the Egyptian embassy, which represents Iraqi interests in the Himalayan kingdom, the Home Ministry said.
“We just got custody of the drivers,” said Rana Abu Zaineh, a spokeswoman for KGL. “We didn’t sleep from happiness. Thank God, everyone helped us,” the Egyptian hostage, Mohamed Ali Sanad, told Al Arabiya television.
In a videotape given to foreign news organizations in Baghdad, the seven men — three Indians, three Kenyans and one Egyptian — were shown wearing white robes and kneeling as they carried out Muslim prayers. They appeared in good health.
Scores of nationals from more than two dozen countries have been kidnapped since April, when insurgents embarked on new tactics to force foreign troops and firms to leave Iraq. The strategy has heightened Iraq’s image as one of the world’s most dangerous countries and scared off investors.
France, meanwhile, was on tenterhooks as it awaited word on the fate of two kidnapped French reporters after a deadline for Paris to scrap a ban on Muslim head scarves in schools apparently passed without incident.
French, Muslim and Arab leaders clung to hopes that diplomatic efforts would save the lives of the French reporters held hostage, Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot. There was no fresh word from the kidnappers, a militant group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq.
Pope John Paul appealed for the release of the Frenchmen. “I issue a pressing appeal for an end to violence... and (appeal) that the two journalists are treated with humanity and released to their loved ones soon,” he said.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday condemned the wave of hostage-takings in Iraq and urged the release of two French journalists threatened with execution.
In a late development, a group calling itself Army of Islam said it had kidnapped a Jordanian in Iraq and cautioned anyone against cooperating with US-led forces, Al Jazeera television reported.
— Additional input from Agencies
