BAGHDAD, 20 October 2004 — A British official from a leading international aid agency was kidnapped in Iraq yesterday as four Iraqi national guards were killed and scores wounded in a mortar attack on their base. The latest unrest, which also included twin attacks on northern oil pipelines, came as Britain hinted it would agree to a request by the United States to send some of its troops away from its relatively peaceful centre of operations in the south to more unstable areas.
The move would free up US forces to crack down on insurgents in their stronghold of Fallujah, where US warplanes yesterday struck suspected hide-outs of wanted Islamic militant Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi.
Margaret Hassan, the British-born head of CARE International’s Iraq operations and a naturalized Iraqi national who has lived in the country for 30 years was taken early yesterday, the aid organization said in London. The kidnapping sent shock waves across Britain just over one week after the beheading of British hostage Kenneth Bigley. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to her, her family and her colleagues,” said Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
Her abduction was a further sign of the insurgents’ willingness to strike at workers from foreign aid agencies, following the kidnapping of two Italian aid workers in early September, who were released after a three-week ordeal.
Hostage-takings and attacks against the US-led military and Iraq’s fledgling security forces are the trademarks of a bloody insurgency that is bent on preventing the country from holding national elections by January.
Iraqi national guards bore the brunt of the latest onslaught as three mortar rounds exploded on a base in the town of Mashahda north of Baghdad, killing four guards and wounding 82 other people. Back in the capital, one US contractor died and seven other people were wounded, including an American soldier, in a separate mortar and rocket propelled grenade attack on a US army compound.
Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of the US oil services giant Halliburton, confirmed its employee was killed, bringing to 54 the number of deaths suffered by Halliburton and its subcontractors in Iraq.
Determined to flush out pockets of insurgency, US warplanes hit one of the breeding grounds for extremism overnight with 90 minutes of airstrikes on suspected safe houses and weapons depots thought to belong to Zarqawi in southern Fallujah, the military said.
US and Iraqi forces believe that Fallujah, west of Baghdad, has been transformed into the main base for the Jordanian-born Zarqawi and his followers, who are blamed for a slew of car bombings and kidnappings across the country.
Two Iraqis were also killed in fighting between US troops and insurgents as the Americans carried out sweeps around the northern town of Duluiya, considered a hotbed of Islamic extremism, medical sources said. With the United States focusing on Fallujah, Washington has called on London to send troops to other unstable areas - a move that British Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted would only happen unless it was “militarily” justified.
“No decision will be taken to redeploy British troops unless it is clear militarily that that should and can happen,” he said after a meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the British capital.
A day earlier, Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon announced Britain was considering the move and that a decision would be reached later in the week after consultations with the military top brass. British officials have not revealed further details of the redeployment, although it is widely expected that the troops - reportedly numbering 650 - will go to the violence-plagued towns just south of Baghdad.
In Baghdad, a top US official said Washington has called on all its coalition partners for support. “We have had continuing offensive operations going on to disrupt attacks that we think could be going on during Ramadan,” the official said, referring to the holy month of fasting and prayer that started last Friday.
“We went out to all the coalition to ask if there are some forces they can shift around the country to help us in areas where we thought we need more help,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Further pressuring the country as it struggles to recover from decades of war and neglect, saboteurs struck its vital oil industry twice on Tuesday, blowing up a portion of an oil pipeline linking northern oil fields to Turkey and a pipeline near a major refinery, the head of the Northern Oil Company told AFP. The bomb attack, 140 kilometers south of Kirkuk, slashed the northern fields exports from 450,000 to 150,000 barrels per day (bpd) as the company switched to a smaller pipeline, the NOC director Adel Al-Gazzaz told AFP.
