Six hostages in Iraq were free yesterday, four of them after an Iraqi tribal chief in the Fallujah region staged a raid on the house where they were being held. The chief, Ibrahim Jassam, said he learned that four Jordanians were being held in a house at Fallujah's edge and organized about 100 armed men from his tribe to free them Tuesday night. The hostage-takers, who had called themselves "Mujahideen of Iraq, the Group of Death," fled the raid. The Jordanians were abducted eight days ago on a highway near Fallujah. Ahmad Abu-Jaafar, one of the freed men, said, "The kidnappers have nothing to do with the resistance" movement against the U.S. presence in Iraq. Jassam, the tribal leader, called the militants "terrorists, who are not from Fallujah."
| "They're from, um, elsewhere. Somewhere. Not here." |
Former hostage Mohammed Khleifat described being blindfolded by the kidnappers and moved to a different house every two days. "We couldn't eat the food they gave us. The four of us got sick from the food and the water," he said.
| "Raman noodles again? Uggh!" |
Still, Jordanian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ali al-Ayed said the men are all in "good health." Without elaborating, Al-Ayed said the kidnappers had made several demands. "We haven't met any of them," he said.
| The demands or the kidnappers? |
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