BAGHDAD, 11 May 2005 — Gunmen kidnapped the governor of Iraq’s western Anbar province yesterday and said he would not be released until US forces stopped an anti-rebel offensive and withdrew from Qaim, a town on the Syrian border.
Gov. Raja Nawaf Farhan Al-Mahalawi was seized as he drove from Qaim to the provincial capital of Ramadi in the morning, his brother, Hammad, said. The kidnappers later telephoned the family and said they were holding the governor until US forces pull out of Qaim, about 320 km west of Baghdad, Hammad said. US forces are conducting one of their largest offensives in six months in the remote desert region, believed to be a haven for followers of militant leader Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi.
“We don’t respond to insurgent or terrorist demands,” said Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a spokesman for US forces in Iraq. “We don’t respond to threats of terrorism.”
On Monday, Marines fought house-to-house against dozens of well-armed insurgents firing at them from balconies, rooftops and sandbagged bunkers in nearby Ubaydi and surrounding villages, the Los Angeles Times reported. As many as 100 militants have been killed so far in Operation Matador, one of the largest American offensives in Iraq in six months, the military said.
In continued violence in the capital Baghdad, two suicide car bombs killed at least seven Iraqis. All the seven died when a suicide car bomb blew up near a US patrol in central Baghdad. Three policemen were wounded when another suicide car bomb targeted a Tigris River patrol headquarters in the center of the capital, leading Iraqi police to hurl insults at US soldiers nearby. “Get out of our country and there will be no more explosions,” one policemen shouted in Arabic.
Japan said the apparent kidnapping of a Japanese man by a militant group would not affect Tokyo’s troop deployment in Iraq.
In Australia, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said there was no news on the fate of Australian hostage Douglas Wood, 63, after the expiry of a 1900 GMT Monday deadline set by kidnappers for Canberra to start withdrawing troops from Iraq.
— Additional input from agencies
