Arab satellite television Al Jazeera says an Islamist group has freed two women relatives of Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi but is still holding his male cousin hostage.
| That's the guy in his 70s. Takes real Islamic heroes to hold an old man like that... |
The channel, which was quoting unidentified sources, gave no further details. Iraqi officials were not immediately available to confirm the report. A previously unknown Islamist group seized the prime minister's 75-year-old first cousin Ghazi Allawi along with Ghazi's wife and their daughter-in-law in Baghdad. The group threatened to kill them in 48 hours unless Iraq's interim Government called off the US-led assault on the rebel-held city of Fallujah and freed prisoners.
| That worked well, didn't it? |
The government said it would not be influenced by the abductions, which took place a day after Dr Allawi ordered a full-scale assault on Fallujah, which his Government and the US military say had become a haven for foreign Islamist fighters. Relatives of one of the kidnapped women, identified as Wasnaa Mohammed Jaafar Husseini, begged her captors to release her saying she was nine months pregnant. |