BAGHDAD, 3 September 2004 — An Iraqi extremist group has killed three Turkish hostages, Al-Jazeera television said yesterday, adding it had received a video of the execution. Police and medical officers said three Turkish drivers were found shot dead by the side of a road in Samarra, north of Baghdad.
Al-Jazeera said the kidnappers, members of the Tawhid wal Jihad group linked to alleged Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, had threatened in a statement to kill foreigners in Iraq and warned: “The time for mercy is over.”
The television showed a photo of the three Turks seated and holding identity cards, flanked by three armed and masked men.
A resident of Jalsyia, 11 km from Samarra, discovered the bodies of the three men late Wednesday, Police Col. Fahran Mohammed said.
They had been executed two days earlier, with bullet wounds to the head and stomach, a local doctor said.
Identification papers were found on two of the men, identifying them as Yahya Sadr, 53, and Majid Mehmet Al-Gilami, 42.
The US military said it had launched an airstrike late on Wednesday on two buildings in the restive city of Fallujah being used as safe houses by Zarqawi’s loyalists, and had earlier observed the men killing a captive and burying his body.
“Surrounded by fields, the two targeted buildings served as safe houses and meeting locations for known Zarqawi associates,” a US military statement said. “The Zarqawi associates were observed removing a man from the trunk of a car, executing him, then burying his body.”
Twenty Iraqis were killed and six wounded in the airstrike, doctors said.
Scores of hostages from dozens of countries have been seized in the past five months. Most have been freed but more than 20 have been killed by their captors. Earlier this week, a guerrilla group said it had killed 12 Nepalese captives in the biggest mass killing of hostages since the wave of kidnappings began in April.
On Wednesday, seven truck drivers — three Indians, three Kenyans and an Egyptian — were freed after being held for nearly six weeks. The Kuwaiti company that employs them said it had paid a ransom of more than $500,000.
The captors of the two French journalists, Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, demanded that France rescind a new law banning conspicuous religious symbols including Muslim head scarves from state schools. The French government refused.
Paris hopes diplomacy will save the hostages. Foreign Minister Michel Barnier is in Amman as part of a Middle East mission that has rallied support from Arab leaders.
A Muslim delegation from France trying to win the release of the journalists said they had received proof the men were alive and well. “We are optimistic and confident that they will be released soon,” Mohamed Bichari, vice president of the Muslim French Council, told reporters at a news conference in Baghdad, after a meeting with the influential Muslim Clerics’ Association. He did not say what proof he had seen.
Le Figaro editor Jean de Belot said late last night that the hostage-takers had handed over the journalists to a Sunni group opposed to their kidnap and murder.
— Additional input from agencies
