Kidnappers released footage of eight Chinese hostages they threatened to execute unless Beijing "clarifies its role" in Iraq, while a Syrian Catholic archbishop was released a day after being captured.
And as the campaign for the January 30 general elections kicked into second gear despite the violence, US Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice acknowledged shortcomings in training of Iraqi security forces.
In a tape broadcast Tuesday on Arab news networks and showing eight Chinese nationals holding up their passports guarded by two hooded men, the kidnappers charged the group had "worked with US forces in Iraq."
"We ask the Chinese government to clarify its position toward those and other Chinese who have entered Iraq to help occupation forces," said one of them without identifying his organization.
The Chinese embassy in Baghdad confirmed that eight construction workers from the southern province of Fujian had been abducted last week on the main highway from Iraq to Jordan, China's official Xinhua news agency reported.
Another video released Tuesday showed a Lebanese held by a previously unknown group on charges of working with the US military. The embassy could not immediately confirm his capture.
The latest hostage crisis came quick on the heels of another kidnapping episode that sent shockwaves through Iraq's small Christian minority.
A Syrian Catholic archbishop nabbed in the northern city of Mosul on Monday afternoon, was released by his captors less than 24 hours later.
Monsignor Basile Georges Casmoussa said after his release he had been treated well, and that the kidnappers had captured him by mistake and did not request a ransom for his release.
His statement contradicted earlier declarations by a senior prelate who said money was being collected to free him, as well as his own driver's statement.
The short crisis raised the specter of growing sectarian strife ahead of the elections, though most of the ethnic-torn country's Christian leaders downplayed the kidnapping, blaming criminal gangs.
Sunni Arab insurgents fiercely opposed to the very principle of democratic polls have stepped up their attacks against the long-oppressed majority Shiites, who are expected to dominate the vote.
On Tuesday, a suicide car bomber killed himself and two others at a checkpoint some 30 meters (yards) from the headquarters of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) -- home also to party leader Abdel Aziz Hakim.
Al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group claimed responsibility for the attack in an Internet statement.
Iraq's Interior Minister Falah Naqib warned the country risked sliding into civil war if the Sunni minority boycotted the elections.
Eleven other Iraqis were killed in a string of separate incidents across Iraq, and a US soldier was killed in the Baghdad area.
With milestone elections less than two weeks away, an electoral debate so far subdued by relentless violence and fear of insurgent reprisal for participation in the electoral process started gathering steam.
US-backed interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi staked the hopes of the Iraqi National Accord -- his party -- on his reputation for tough security policies, setting out its platform for the polls.
His party also accused policemen loyal to the Shiite list of abusing their position to intimidate voters in the majority community's southern heartland.
One of Allawi's running mates, state minister Adnan Junabi, took up the allegations further Tuesday, accusing Shiite supporters in the main southern city of Basra of pressuring voters and again criticizing the use of religion.
Ironically, Junabi was forced to admit that the premier's own supporters within the security forces had been guilty of similar abuses, after policemen were seen handing out campaign materials for Allawi's list in Baghdad.
A US official conceded there had been violations by several of the larger parties but insisted that teething problems were only to be expected in a country that was holding its first free elections in a half century.
In Washington, Rice acknowledged that problems needed to be solved over the training of Iraq's fledgling security services -- to face their toughest challenge so far when they take near full responsibility for security on election day.
She told the Senate foreign relations committee that Americans were working "to address some of these problems of leadership and morale and desertion in the armed forces and in the police forces and to look at some of the equipping of the police forces."
Rice also warned that Syria may face new US sanctions if it maintains its ties to terrorists and cross-border help for insurgents in neighboring Iraq. |
A leader of al Qaeda in Iraq has been sentenced to death for the killing of Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, whose murder in March drew worldwide condemnation, the Iraqi government said on Sunday. The Iraqi Central Criminal Court imposed the death sentence on Ahmed Ali Ahmed, known as Abu Omar, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.