BAGHDAD, 14 April 2005 — A spate of deadly bombings across the country yesterday coincided with a visit by US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick as a US hostage in Iraq pleaded with his government to withdraw its troops.
A US Embassy spokesman said the hostage shown crying on footage aired on Al-Jazeera television may be Jeffrey Ake, a subcontractor kidnapped on Monday. The man was abducted by eight hooded men who drove up in two cars to a poorly guarded construction site near Taji, north of Baghdad, said a security source, asking not to be named.
The hostage, who was shown surrounded by three masked men armed with rifles as he sat behind a wooden desk, called on Washington to “open a dialogue with the Iraqi resistance” to save his life, the Arab satellite channel said.
He also urged US forces to promptly pull out of Iraq, according to the Qatar-based news channel, as he cried holding what looked like a passport and identification card to his chest.
Meanwhile, 10 soldiers including the commander of security forces for the Kirkuk oil fields were killed in a bomb attack near an oil pipeline outside the northern city, police Maj. Gen. Turhan Yussef told AFP.
The bomb blew up as they were defusing another device, Yussef said.
The Defense Ministry has created a thousands-strong force to guard Iraq’s vital oil and electricity infrastructure, with oil exports from Kirkuk to Turkey shut down by an intense campaign of sabotage.
Rebels rocked the capital yesterday with a slew of attacks as Zoellick arrived in the country.
A car bomb blew up near a convoy of US contractors on the perilous road to Baghdad airport, setting ablaze one US military vehicle and five civilian cars and wounding two, an Interior Ministry source and the US Embassy said.
In the neighboring Amariya district, a haven for rebels, a car parked on the side of the road exploded as a US military convoy passed, wounding four civilians, two of them critically, an Iraqi National Guardsman said.
— With input from agencies
