DUBAI, 27 June 2004 — Suspected militants from Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi’s group have kidnapped three Turks in Iraq and are threatening to behead them unless Ankara pulls out all forces within 72 hours, Al- Jazeera television said yesterday.
Al-Jazeera said it had received a statement and a video tape purportedly from the Jama’at Al Tawhid and Jihad of Al-Qaeda-linked operative Zarqawi urging Turks to demonstrate against Bush’s visit to Turkey to attend a NATO summit.
The deadline would expire before the end of the two-day summit scheduled for Monday and Tuesday.
A brief video image showed three men — holding what appeared to be passports — crouching before gunmen, whose faces were covered. Al-Jazeera said the men had read out their names in Turkish on the recording.
Turkey is not part of the multinational occupation force in Iraq but many Turks work as contractors supplying and supporting US-led forces.
According to Al-Jazeera, the statement called on “Turkish forces and companies that support the occupation forces in Iraq” to leave by the deadline or the three workers would be killed.
Last week, the same group claimed responsibility for beheading a South Korean hostage after Seoul rejected demands to pull military medics and engineers out of Iraq and drop plans to send more
Meanwhile, multiple bomb scares and a small explosion heightened tension in Turkey yesterday, hours ahead of Bush’s visit. A small bomb attached to a banner carrying an anti-NATO message exploded yesterday morning on a footbridge in downtown Istanbul, causing no injuries but raising fears of further attacks.
On Thursday, four people died and more than 20 were injured when a small bomb exploded outside the hotel where Bush will stay overnight Saturday in Ankara and on a crowded bus in Istanbul. Another home-made bomb was defused in a town near Istanbul.
The blast aboard the bus was apparently accidental, caused according to police by a 29-year-old woman who was transporting the bomb for an attack elsewhere. The woman, said to be a left-wing extremist wanted for other bomb attacks, was among the four killed. No one claimed immediate responsibility but police believe the attacks are the work of underground left-wing organizations opposed to the United States and to NATO.
Bush, and his wife Laura, who earlier met EU leaders in Ireland, were to fly into Ankara in the evening amid tight security.
Hundreds of police and paramilitary gendarmes were to line the 34-kilometer road linking Esenboga airport to the downtown Hilton hotel where the Bushes will spend the night.
Central Ankara was already closing down yesterday afternoon as police blocked off dozens of roads and residents were forced to remove parked cars from all streets likely to be used by the presidential party.
“Bush torment begins,” ran the headline in Vatan newspaper yesterday.
“Our weekend will be a wash-out, no one is going to risk coming round here,” an optician, Atilla Kaplan, whose shop is located on one of the main downtown streets, told AFP.troops.
