BAGHDAD, 22 July 2004 — A fresh hostage crisis flared in Iraq yesterday as a group calling itself “Black Flags” threatened to behead six new foreign hostages unless their Kuwaiti employer pulled out of the country.

The group said it had taken three Indians, two Kenyans and an Egyptian hostage and threatened to behead them if their Kuwaiti employer did not pull out of Iraq, according to a video aired by Al-Arabiya television.

One of the hooded gunmen, who appeared with a group of presumed hostages, said the company should leave Iraq and close its offices there, threatening to behead a hostage every 72 hours if it failed to comply.

The Egyptian Embassy in Baghdad confirmed that a trucker, Mohammed Ali, had been taken. The news came barely 48 hours after another Egyptian truck driver had been released by another group.

Violence continued unabated adding to the security worries of the new government as bomb blasts and gunfire killed at least 12 people.

Adding to the unease, Bulgaria and Poland became the latest US allies here to receive threats on a website telling them to join the exodus, as a former Filipino hostage headed home after Manila pulled its small but symbolic contingent out of Iraq to save his life.

Amid escalating violence just three weeks after the US-led occupation ended, Iraq called on neighboring countries for help, saying it wanted a joint security cooperation to protect their common borders.

Large-scale bombings have rocked Iraq’s interim government since it became sovereign on June 28 as insurgents conducted attacks aimed at discrediting the new administration, which is struggling to prepare for general elections by January, a senior military official said.

Underscoring the determination of a 15-month-old rebellion, Iraqi officials said a car bomb ripped through Ramadi, 100 kilometers west of Baghdad, killing three brothers walking down a main road lined with public buildings.

“Three brothers, Sattar, Mustapha and Yussef Khalil were killed in a car bomb explosion,” said Dr. Assad Aliwi from the general hospital in Ramadi.

A fourth person was killed and 14 were wounded in clashes between US troops and rebel forces in the city, hospital and police officials said.

A US military spokesman confirmed that American soldiers were battling insurgents in the Sunni bastion but had no details.

In Baghdad, at least four people were killed when a car bomb ravaged a residential neighborhood sending body parts hurtling onto the roof of nearby houses, police and witnesses said.

Three mutilated bodies were seen covered in white and green cloth close to where the blast occurred at about 5:30 p.m. down a small side street flanked by low-level apartments in southeast Baghdad.

Two people were killed and four wounded when a missile hit the seventh floor of a Baghdad hospital, while one US soldier died and six were hurt when their patrol hit a roadside bomb after midnight near the rebel hotbed of Samarra, itself a scene of violence on Tuesday.

In Kirkuk in the north, a policeman died and three were wounded when their patrol was targeted by rocket-propelled grenades, police said.

Meanwhile, a group calling itself Al-Qaeda Organization in Europe threatened Poland and Bulgaria with attack unless they withdrew their troops from the country.

Both Warsaw and Sofia dismissed the message.

“We maintain the position we have expressed many times that you should never act under pressure from terrorists. You should never give in to them,” Deputy Defense Minister Janusz Zemke was quoted as saying by the PAP news agency.

Manila, however, bowed to the demands of the abductors of Philippine truck driver Angelo dela Cruz and withdrew its 51 soldiers and police from Iraq one month ahead of schedule to save the 46-year-old father of eight from beheading despite objections from Baghdad and Washington.

The trucker left Baghdad for Abu Dhabi for a medical check-up before he travels home to be reunited with his anxious family after a two-week drama that has gripped his compatriots.

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has strongly defended her decision to withdraw from Iraq, but the withdrawal of the Philippines may be a symbolic blow to the caretaker government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

— Additional input from agencies