DUBAI/BAGHDAD, 6 September 2004 — An Iraqi Islamist group said it would stop kidnapping people seen abetting US forces in Iraq if Sunni Muslim scholars issue a religious fatwa or edict forbidding hostage-taking, Al Arabiya reported yesterday.

The Arabic television station aired a video which it said was from the Black Banners Division of the Islamic Secret Army — which had kidnapped and later released seven employees of a Kuwaiti firm — in which they said they and other militant groups were ready to abide by any fatwa, or edict, issued.

“We call on the Muslim Clerics’ Association to issue a fatwa forbidding this work and we announce that we are ready to abide by it,” a masked militant told the camera.

The authenticity of the tape could not be verified. “We know that all the Islamic resistance movements in Iraq will abide by it if it is in the interest of Islam, Jihad and Iraq,” he said, without giving details.

It was not immediately clear what links this group has with other militants engaged in kidnappings to undermine Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s US-backed interim government, or for ransom.

Militant groups have seized scores of hostages from dozens of countries in the past five months and more than 20 have been killed.

There was no immediate comment from the Muslim Clerics’ Association.

Meanwhile, prominent members of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr’s movement have become the latest targets in a shadowy insurgency gripping Iraq, raising fears of more unrest in a country plagued by violence.

Sadr’s followers say they believe the attacks are part of a wider campaign to target Iraq’s Shiite majority, destined for power in a democratic Iraq having been sidelined for decades by Sunnis. Last Tuesday, members of Sadr’s movement heading to Najaf were attacked by gunmen on a road notorious for drive-by shootings and kidnappings near Latifiya, south of Baghdad.

The attack, which killed three, including a political leader in the group, Basheer Al-Jazairi, came a day after another member of the group, Ali Al-Mohammadawi, was shot dead outside his home in southern Baghdad. The US military in Iraq has long accused Jordanian militant Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi of attempting to spark civil war by targeting Iraq’s Shiite population.

On Wednesday, thousands of mourners attended Jazairi’s funeral procession in Baghdad before converging on the world’s largest cemetery in Najaf to bury him.

Sami Al-Masoudi, a Baghdad mosque preacher from the Sadr movement, says armed men tried to kidnap him a week ago. He said they spoke in a dialect associated with foreign Sunnis.

The attackers shot him in the thigh but fled after coming under fire from men in the area. The cleric still lies in a hospital bed in central Baghdad having had eight operations to reconstruct his shattered leg.

A spokesman for Sadr’s office, Mahmoud Al-Sudani, said he doubted the Sadr movement was being singled out for assassinations.

“I don’t think we’re being specifically targeted. I think there is a plot to kill Shiite leaders in Iraq, political or religious,” he said.

Sudani points the blame at Sunni extremists who he says may be trying to create civil war. “They behead innocents and give their groups Islamic names when they don’t even know the principles of Islam,” he said.

Iraq is scheduled to hold elections on Jan. 2 to choose a transitional government for 2005 that will write the permanent constitution and oversee full elections scheduled for late 2005.