BAGHDAD, 5 September 2004 — A suicide car bomb attack in the northern town of Kirkuk and fighting between US forces and insurgents near Mosul killed 30 people yesterday as rebels seized a Turkish truck driver and threatened to kill him unless the company he works for halted its operations in Iraq.
Ambulances raced to the scene of the blast in Kirkuk, where seven cars were ablaze. Rescue personnel ferried the wounded away on stretchers. Some waited for attention while sprawled on the building’s steps. Thirty-six people were injured.
“This is a terrorist act against members of Iraqi police who were heading home,” said Kirkuk police Col. Sarhat Qadir.
In Tal Afar, a town near Mosul, a US observation helicopter was hit by enemy fire and forced to make an emergency landing amid the fighting, said US Army Capt. Angela Bowman. The aircraft’s two crew members were wounded, she said.
Fawazi Mohammed, the head of the local hospital, said at least eight people died and another 50 were wounded during the clashes. Many of the casualties were caused by a mortar shell explosion in a Tal Afar market, authorities said.
American soldiers killed two insurgents and captured another, while three Iraqi national guardsmen were injured in the fighting, the military said.
Al-Arabiya television aired a videotape by militants threatening to behead the Turkish truck driver if his employers and the Kuwaiti contractor they work for did not cease operations in Iraq within 48 hours.
The group, calling itself the Islamic Resistance Movement — Al-Noaman Brigades, released a tape showing a bearded man, purported to be the truck driver, sitting in front of a black banner bearing the group’s name.
In Paris, the French Interior Minister insisted that signs still pointed to a release soon for two French journalists held hostage in Iraq but suggested that insecurity there was complicating the process.
“All the indications that we have confirm the hope of a release soon,” said Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin. “But you know the situation that exists in Iraq and, in this context, the greatest caution is of course necessary.”
De Villepin, a former foreign minister intricately involved in efforts to resolve the hostage drama, spoke after welcoming home a delegation of French Muslim leaders who traveled to Iraq to push for the release of Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot.
Mohammed Bechari, a member of the returning delegation, said logistical problems and insecurity in Iraq were complicating the release. Some observers guessed that militants holding the reporters may fear that a hostage-handover could expose them to US military forces.
— Additional input from agencies
