Gunmen Seize Five in Two Iraq Kidnappings

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Gunmen abducted a Lebanese-American contractor who worked with the U.S. Army from his Baghdad home, Iraqi officials said Wednesday, while four Jordanian truck drivers were seized in a separate attack.

Radim Sadeq, a contractor with a mobile phone company, was snatched by gunmen when he answered the door of his home in Baghdad’s Mansour neighborhood overnight, Lt. Col. Maan Khalaf said.

It was the second abduction this week in the upscale neighborhood, where many foreign companies are based. On Monday, gunmen stormed the two-story compound of a Saudi company, abducting six people – including an American, a Nepalese, a Filipino and three Iraqis – after a gun battle that left an Iraqi guard and one of the attackers dead.

In other violence, a U.S. soldier died and another was wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near Salman Pak, about 10 miles southeast of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, meanwhile, urged insurgents in the western city of Fallujah to lay down their arms and participate in peaceful elections, scheduled for January.

American forces are preparing for a major offensive against Fallujah and other Sunni militant strongholds north and west of Baghdad in hopes of curbing the insurgency ahead of the national vote.

“What we are saying to people in Fallujah is this … Lay down your weapons, submit to the authority of that U.N.-appointed government and participate in the election and see from the election how much support you have,” Blair told lawmakers in the House of Commons.

Earlier Wednesday, U.S warplanes hit an insurgent command post in Fallujah in a precision airstrike, the U.S. military said. Late Tuesday, a known weapons cache site in the southeastern part of the city also was destroyed, according to a statement.

Separately, Hungary announced it will withdraw its 300 non-combat troops from Iraq by March 31, the country’s new prime minister said Wednesday as he faced mounting opposition to the soldiers’ presence.

“We are obliged to stay there until the (Iraqi) elections. To stay longer is an impossibility,” Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany said.

But Denmark’s prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said Wednesday his country’s 501 soldiers in the southern port city of Basra “will stay there as long as needed so the Iraqis can be helped to become masters in their own homes.”

In Jordan, a government spokeswoman said four Jordanian drivers have been kidnapped in Iraq and two others were shot at by unknown assailants.

Jordanian spokeswoman Asma Khader declined to provide details on the four hostages but said her government has taken up the matter with visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

She said the two other Jordanians came under fire in the Ramadi area in central Iraq – a Muslim Sunni militant stronghold.

More than 170 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since Saddam Hussein’s regime fell in April 2003. More than 30 of them – including three Americans and a Briton – have been killed. Some kidnapping groups seek ransom, while others pursue political motives such as the withdrawal of foreign companies and troops from Iraq.

Insurgents also have targeted Iraqi security forces in an effort to destabilize the country and hamper reconstruction efforts.

A militant Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, claimed Wednesday to have beheaded an Iraqi army officer whom they captured in the northern city of Mosul. The group posted a statement and showed a video on their Web site in which they decapitated a man they identified as Maj. Hussein Shanoun.

It was impossible to verify the claim’s authenticity. The Iraqi military could not be reached for comment. The U.S. military said it was checking the claim.

The group has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks and kidnappings, including the seizures and killings of 11 Iraqi National Guardsmen last month and 12 Nepalese in August.

Arabic TV station Al-Jazeera also broadcast a tape in which a previously unknown group called the Brigades of Iraq’s Honorable claimed to have beheaded three Iraqi National Guards, accusing them of “spying” for U.S. troops.

Meanwhile, the kidnappers of aid worker Margaret Hassan threatened to hand her over to a group headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi unless Britain agrees within 48 hours to pull its troops from Iraq.

Al-Zarqawi’s followers have beheaded at least six hostages: three Americans, a Briton, a Japanese and a South Korean.

The threat to Hassan, the 59-year-old Iraq director for CARE International, was made in a videotape received by Al-Jazeera but not broadcast in its entirety because the station said it was too graphic.

Instead, it showed a soundless segment Tuesday night showing a hooded gunman as a newscaster reported the threat.

British officials declined to comment on the reported demand. Britain has 8,500 troops in Iraq, the second-largest contingent after the United States.

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern told his parliament that the full tape showed the Dublin-born Hassan pleading for her life directly to the camera before suddenly fainting.

Ahern, who had not seen the video, said a bucket of water is then thrown over Hassan’s head and she is filmed lying wet and helpless on the ground before getting up and crying. Ahern described the text of the video as “distressing.”

Hassan, an Irish-British-Iraqi citizen married to an Iraqi, was kidnapped last month from her car in western Baghdad. No group has claimed responsibility.