BAGHDAD, 16 September 2004 — Security forces discovered three beheaded bodies yesterday on a road north of Baghdad, and a car bomb exploded in a town south of the capital, killing two people amid a surge of violence that has left more than 200 dead in the past four days.
The three bodies were found without documents near Dijiel, about 25 miles north of Baghdad, said Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman of the Interior Ministry. They were all male and had tattoos, he said.
A US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the bodies appeared to be Iraqi nationals and that their hands were tied behind their backs.
The car bomb targeted a National Guard checkpoint in Suwayrah, about 40 miles south of Baghdad, Abdul Rahman said. A national guardsman was one of the two dead, he said. Ten people were injured.
Meanwhile, militants released a Turkish man taken hostage in Iraq, according to a videotape obtained by reporters.
“They released me, and I will go to the embassy,” said the hostage, identified as Aytulla Gezmen. He was shown standing next to a masked man before getting into a car. It was not immediately clear where the release of the Arabic translator took place.
In Ramadi, 10 people, including two women, were killed and six wounded yesterday in clashes between insurgents and US forces, according to Saad Al-Amili, a senior Health Ministry official in Baghdad.
Insurgents also fired a rocket-propelled grenade at US and Iraqi soldiers securing a city council building in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, officials and witnesses said.
No one was injured in the attack, which occurred as a city council was meeting, days after being reinstated, said Maj. Neal O’Brien of the 1st Infantry Division. The insurgents fired once, missed, then fled, he said. City officials cut a deal with the Americans last week to reopen the city in return for an end to attacks.
In a separate incident, the chief of the provincial health directorate, Khamis Hussein, escaped unhurt when gunmen opened fire on him, Al-Amili said. One of his bodyguards was killed and his deputy was wounded, he said.
On Tuesday, clashes between US troops and insurgents killed at least eight civilians and wounded 18 in Ramadi, where anti-American sentiments are high.
The violence followed attacks on Tuesday that saw guerrillas bomb a Baghdad street full of police recruits and open fire on a police van north of the capital. At least 59 people were killed, bringing the total dead in the past four days to nearly 150 in Baghdad alone.
The car bomb near the police headquarters for western Baghdad was the deadliest single attack in the capital in six months, wrecking buildings and cars on central Haifa Street, leaving charred bodies and hurling body parts, shoes and debris into nearby trees and homes.
The recent violence appeared to be part of an increasingly brazen and coordinated campaign by the insurgency to bring its battle to Baghdad, sowing chaos for Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and his American allies.
Militant attacks appear to have only grown deadlier since Allawi’s interim government took power in June, despite US claims that Iraqi security forces are showing more resolve against the strikes.
The release of the Turkish hostage came a day after a militant group said in a video that it would free Gezmen after he converted to Islam and repented working for the Americans. The Shoura Council of the Mujahedeen threatened to behead all those who deal with coalition forces.
Gezmen said in the earlier video that he had been working with US forces for seven months, adding that after his kidnapping he started to pray, read the Qur’an and had converted to Islam. “I bear witness that there’s no god but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s messenger,” he said, repeating the Muslim declaration of faith.
— Additional input from agencies
